the advantage of his sufferings and compassion And we may observe that Poverty Predestination and Ambition are the three quivers from which the Devil drew his arrows which as the most likely to prevail he shot against Christ but now he shot in vain and gave probation that he might be overcome our Captain hath conquered for himself and us By these instances we see our danger and how we are provided of a remedy The PRAYER O Holy Jesus who didst fulfil all Righteousness and didst live a life of evenness and obedience and community submitting thy self to all Rites and Sanctions of Divine ordinance give me grace to live in the fellowship of thy holy Church a life of Piety and without singularity receiving the sweet influence of thy Sacraments and Rites and living in the purities and innocencies of my first Sanctification I adore thy goodness infinite that thou hast been pleased to wash my Soul in the Laver of Regeneration that thou hast consigned me to the participation of thy favours by the holy 〈◊〉 Let me not return to the infirmities of the Old Man whom thou hast crucified on thy Cross and who was buried with thee in Baptism nor 〈◊〉 the crimes of my sinsul years which were so many recessions from 〈◊〉 purities but let me ever receive the emissions of thy Divine Spirit and be a Son of God a partner of thine immortal inheritance and when thou seest it needful I may receive testimony from Heaven that I am thy servant and thy child And grant that I may so walk that I neither disrepute the honour of the Christian Institution nor stain the whitenesses of that Innocence which thou didst invest my Soul withall when I put on the Baptismal Robe nor break my holy Vow nor lose my right of inheritance which thou hast given me by promise and grace but that thou mayest love me with the love of a Father and a Brother and a Husband and a Lord and I serve thee in the communion of Saints in the susception of Sacraments in the actions of a holy life and in a never-failing love or uninterrupted Devotion to the glory of thy Name and the promotion of all those Ends of Religion which thou hast designed in the excellent Oeconomy of Christianity Grant this Holy Jesus for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of thy Name which is and shall be adored for ever and ever Amen DISCOURSE V. Of Temptation 1. GOD who is the Fountain of good did chuse rather to bring good out of evil than not to suffer any evil to be not only because variety of accidents and natures do better entertain our affections and move our spirits who are transported and suffer great impressions by a circumstance by the very opposition and accidental lustre and eminency of contraries but also that the glory of the Divine Providence in turning the nature of things into the designs of God might be illustrious and that we may in a mixt condition have more observation and after our danger and our labour may obtain a greater reward for Temptation is the opportunity of Vertue and a Crown God having disposed us in such a condition that our Vertues must be difficult our inclinations 〈◊〉 and corrigible our avocations many our hostilities bitter our dangers proportionable that our labour might be great our inclinations suppressed and corrected our intentions be made actual our enemies be resisted and our dangers pass into security and honour after a contestation and a victory and a perseverance It is every man's case Trouble is as certainly the lot of our nature and inheritance and we are so sure to be tempted that in the deepest peace and silence of spirit oftentimes is our greatest danger not to be tempted is sometimes our most subtle Temptation It is certain then we cannot be secure when our Security is our enemy but therefore we must do as God himself does make the best of it and not be sad at that which is the publick portion and the case of all men but order it according to the intention place it in the eye of vertue that all its actions and motions may tend thither there to be changed into felicities But certain it is unless we first be cut and hewen in the mountains we shall not be fixed in the Temple of God but by incision and contusions our roughnesses may become plain or our sparks kindled and we may be either for the Temple or the Altar spiritual building or holy fire something that God shall delight in and then the Temptation was not amiss 2. And therefore we must not wonder that oftentimes it so happens that nothing will remove a Temptation no diligence no advices no labour no prayers not because these are ineffectual but because it is most fit the Temptation should abide for ends of God's designing and although S. Paul was a person whose prayers were likely to be prevalent and his industry of much prudence and efficacy toward the drawing out of his thorn yet God would not do it but continued his war only promising to send him succour My grace is sufficient for thee meaning he should have an enemy to try his spirit and improve it and he should also have God's grace to comfort and support it but as without God's grace the Enemy would spoil him so without an Enemy God's grace would never swell up into glory and crown him For the caresses of a pleasant Fortune are apt to swell into extravagancies of spirit and burst into the dissolution of manners and unmixt Joy is dangerous but if in our fairest Flowers we spie a Locust or feel the uneasiness of a Sackcloth under our fine Linen or our Purple be tied with an uneven and a rude Cord any little trouble but to correct our wildnesses though it be but a Death's-head served up at our Feasts it will make our Tables fuller of health and freer from snare it will allay our spirits making them to retire from the weakness of dispersion to the union and strength of a sober recollection 3. Since therefore it is no part of our imployment or our care to be free from all the attempts of an enemy but to be safe in despite of his hostility it now will concern us to inform our selves of the state of the War in general and then to make provisions and to put on Armour accordingly 4. First S. 〈◊〉 often observes and makes much of the discourse that the Devil when he intends a Battery first views the Strengths and Situation of the place His sence drawn out of the cloud of an Allegory is this The Devil first considers the Constitution and temper of the person he is to tempt and where he observes his natural inclination apt for a Vice he presents him with objects and opportunity and arguments 〈◊〉 to his caitive disposition from which he is likely to receive the smaller opposition since there is a party within that desires his
his Disciples to verifie his Promise to make demonstration of his Divinity to lay some superstructures of his Church upon the foundation of his former Sermons to instruct them in the mysteries of his Kingdom to prepare them for the reception of the Holy Ghost and as he had in his state of Separation triumphed over Hell so in his Resurrection he set his foot upon Death and brought it under his dominion so that although it was not yet destroyed yet it is made his subject it hath as yet the condition of the Gibeonites who were not banished out of the land but they were made drawers of water and bewers of wood so is Death made instrumental to Christ's Kingdom but it abides still and shall till the day of Judgment but shall serve the ends of our Lord and promote the interests of Eternity and do benefit to the Church 8. And it is considerable that our Blessed Lord having told them that after three days he would rise again yet he shortened the time as much as was possible that he might verifie his own prediction and yet make his absence the less troublesome he rises early in the morning the first day of the week for so our dearest Lord abbreviates the days of our sorrow and lengthens the years of our consolation for he knows that a day of sorrow seems a year and a year of joy passes like a day and therefore God lessens the one and 〈◊〉 the other to make this perceived and that supportable Now the Temple which the Jews destroyed God raised up in six and thirty hours but this second Temple was more glorious than the first for now it was clothed with robes of glory with clarity agility and immortality and though like Moses descending from the mount he wore a veil that the greatness of his splendor might not render him unapt for conversation with his servants yet the holy Scripture affirms that he was now no more to see corruption meaning that now he was separate from the passibility and affections of humane bodies and could suffer S. Thomas to thrust his hand into the wound of his side and his singer into the holes of his hands without any grief or smart 9. But although the graciousness and care of the Lord had prevented all diligence and satisfied all desires returning to life before the most forward faith could expect him yet there were three Maries went to the grave so early that they prevented the rising of the Sun and though with great obedience they stayed till the end of the Sabbath yet as soon as that was done they had other parts of duty and affection which called with greatest importunity to be speedily satisfied And if Obedience had not bound the feet of Love they had gone the day before but they became to us admirable patterns of Obedience to the Divine Commandments For though Love were stronger than death yet Obedience was stronger than Love and made a rare dispute in the spirits of those holy Women in which the flesh and the spirit were not the litigants but the spirit and the spirit and they resisted each other as the Angel-guardian of the Jews resisted the tutelar Angel of Persia each striving who should with most love and zeal perform their charge and God determined And so he did here too For the Law of the Sabbath was then a Divine Commandment and although piety to the dead and to such a dead was ready to force their choice to do violence to their will bearing them up on wings of desire to the grave of the LORD yet at last they reconciled Love with Obedience For they had been taught that Love is best expressed in keeping of the Divine Commandments But now they were at liberty and sure enough they made use of its first minute and going so early to seek Christ they were sure they should find him 10. The Angels descended Guardians of the Sepulchre for God sent his guards too and they affrighted the Watch appointed by Pilate and the Priests but when the women came they spake like comforters full of sweetness and consolation laying aside their affrighting glories as knowing it is the will of their Lord that they should minister good to them that love him But a conversation with Angels could not satisfie them who came to look for the Lord of the Angels and found him not and when the Lord was pleased to appear to Mary Magdalen she was so swallowed up with love and sorrow that she entred into her joy and perceived it not she saw the Lord and knew him not For so from the closets of darkness they that immediately stare upon the Sun perceive not the beauties of the light and feel nothing but amazement But the voice of the Lord opened her eyes and she knew him and worshipped him but was denied to touch him and commanded to tell the Apostles for therefore God ministers to us comforts and revelations not that we may dwell in the sensible fruition of them our selves alone but that we communicate the grace to others But when the other women were returned and saw the Lord then they were all together admitted to the embracement and to kiss the feet of Jesus For God hath his opportunities and periods which at another time he denies and we must then rejoyce in it when he vouchsafes it and submit to his Divine will when he denies it 11. These good women had the first fruits of the apparition for their forward love and the passion of their Religion made greater haste to entertain a Grace and was a greater endearment of their persons to our Lord than a more sober reserved and less active spirit This is more safe but that is religious this goes to God by the way of understanding that by the will this is supported by discourse that by passions this is the sobriety of the Apostles the other was the zeal of the holy women and because a strong fancy and an earnest passion sixed upon holy objects are the most active and forward instruments of Devotion as Devotion is of Love therefore we find God hath made great expressions of his acceptance of such dispositions And women and less knowing persons and tender dispositions and pliant natures will make up a greater number in Heaven than the severe and wary and enquiring people who sometimes love because they believe and believe because they can demonstrate but never believe because they love When a great Understanding and a great Affection meet together it makes a Saint great like an Apostle but they do not well who make abatement of their religious passions by the severity of their Understanding It is no matter by which we are brought to Christ so we love him and obey him but if the production admit of 〈◊〉 that instrument is the most excellent which produces the greatest love and 〈◊〉 discourse and a sober spirit be in it self the best yet we do not always suffer that to be a
kept the same form and power in the several Families which were in the original yet it introduced some new necessities which although they varied in the instance yet were to be determined by such instruments of Reason which were given to us at first upon foresight of the publick necessities of the World And when the Families came to be divided that their common Parent being extinct no Master of a Family had power over another Master the rights of such men and their natural power became equal because there was nothing to distinguish them and because they might do equal injury and invade each other's possessions and disturb their peace and surprise their liberty And so also was their power of doing benefit equal though not the same in kind But God who made Man a sociable creature because he knew it was not good for him to be alone so dispensed the abilities and possibilities of doing good that in something or other every man might need or be benefited by every man Therefore that they might pursue the end of Nature and their own appetites of living well and happily they were forced to consent to such Contracts which might secure and supply to every one those good things without which he could not live happily Both the Appetites the Irascible and the Concupiscible fear of evil and desire of benefit were the sufficient endearments of Contracts of Societies and Republicks And upon this stock were decreed and hallowed all those Propositions without which Bodies politick and Societies of men cannot be happy And in the transaction of these many accidents daily happening it grew still reasonable that is necessary to the End of living happily that all those after-Obligations should be observed with the proportion of the same faith and endearment which bound the first Contracts For though the natural Law be always the same yet some parts of it are primely necessary others by supposition and accident and both are of the same necessity that is equally necessary in the several cases Thus to obey a King is as necessary and naturally reasonable as to obey a Father that is supposing there be a King as it is certain naturally a man cannot be but a Father must be supposed If it be made necessary that I promise it is also necessary that I perform it for else I shall return to that inconvenience which I sought to avoid when I made the Promise and though the instance be very far removed from the first necessities and accidents of our prime being and production yet the reason still pursues us and natural Reason reaches up to the very last minutes and orders the most remote particulars of our well-being 11. Thus Not to Steal Not to commit Adultery Not to kill are very reasonable prosecutions of the great End of Nature of living well and happily But when a man is said to steal when to be a Murtherer when to be Incestuous the natural Law doth not teach in all cases but when the superinduced Constitution hath determined the particular Law by natural Reason we are obliged to observe it because though the Civil power makes the instance and determines the particular yet right Reason makes the Sanction and passes the Obligation The Law of Nature makes the major Proposition but the Civil Constitution or any superinduced Law makes the Assumption in a practical Syllogism To kill is not Murther but to kill such persons whom I ought not It was not Murther among the Jews to kill a man-slayer before he entred a City of Refuge to kill the same man after his entry was Among the Romans to kill an Adulteress or a Ravisher in the act was lawful with us it is Murther Murther and Incest and Theft always were unlawful but the same actions were not always the same crimes And it is just with these as with Disobedience which was ever criminal but the same thing was not estimated to be Disobedience nor indeed could any thing be so till the Sanction of a Superior had given the instance of Obedience So for Theft To catch Fish in rivers or Deer or Pigeons when they were esteemed ferae naturae of a wild condition and so primo 〈◊〉 was lawful just as to take or kill Badgers or Foxes and Bevers and Lions but when the Laws had appropriated Rivers and divided Shores and imparked Deer and housed Pigeons it became Theft to take them without leave To despoil the Egyptians was not Theft when God who is the Lord of all possessions had bidden the Israelites but to do so now were the breach of the natural Law and of a Divine Commandment For the natural Law I said is eternal in the Sanction but variable in the instance and the expression And indeed the Laws of Nature are very few They were but two at first and but two at last when the great change was made from Families to Kingdoms The first is to do duty to God The second is to do to our selves and our Neighbours that is to our neighbours as to our selves all those actions which naturally reasonably or by institution or emergent necessity are in order to a happy life Our Blessed Saviour reduces all the Law to these two 1. Love the Lord with all thy heart 2. Love thy neighbour as thy self In which I observe in verification of my former discourse that Love is the first natural bond of Duty to God and so also it is to our Neighbour And therefore all entercourse with our neighbour was founded in and derived from the two greatest endearments of Love in the world A man came to have a Neighbour by being a Husband and a Father 12. So that still there are but two great natural Laws binding us in our relations to God and Man we remaining essentially and by the very design of creation obliged to God in all and to our neighbours in the proportions of equality as thy self that is that he be permitted and promoted in the order to his living well and happily as thou art for Love being there not an affection but the duty that results from the first natural bands of Love which began Neighbourhood signifies Justice Equality and such reasonable proceedings which are in order to our common End of a happy life and is the same with that other Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you do you to them and that is certainly the greatest and most effective Love because it best promotes that excellent End which God designed for our natural perfection All other particulars are but prosecutions of these two that is of the order of Nature save only that there is a third Law which is a part of Love too it is Self-love and therefore is rather supposed than at the first expressed because a man is reasonably to be presumed to have in him a sufficient stock of Self-love to serve the ends of his nature and creation and that is that man demean and use his own body
his leisure either we disrepute the infinity of his Wisdom or give clear demonstration of our own vanity 2. When God descended to earth he chose to be born in the Suburbs and retirement of a small Town but he was pleased to die at Jerusalem the Metropolis of Judaea Which chides our shame and pride who are willing to publish our gayeties in Piazza's and the corners of the streets of most populous places but our defects and the instruments of our humiliation we carry into desarts and cover with the night and hide them under ground thinking no secrecy dark enough to hide our shame nor any theatre large enough to behold our pompous vanities for so we make provisions for Pride and take great care to exclude Humility 3. When the Holy Virgin now perceived that the expectation of the Nations was arrived at the very doors of revelation and entrance into the World she brought forth the Holy Jesus who like Light through transparent glass past through or a ripe Pomegranate from a fruitful tree fell to the earth without doing violence to its Nurse and Parent She had no ministers to attend but Angels and neither her Poverty nor her Piety would permit her to provide other Nurses but her self did the offices of a tender and pious Parent She kissed him and worshipped him and thanked him that he would be born of her and she suckled him and bound him in her arms and swadling-bands and when she had 〈◊〉 to God her first scene of joy and Eucharist she softly laid him in the manger till her desires and his own necessities called her to take him and to rock him softly in her arms and from this deportment she read a lecture of Piety and maternal care which Mothers should perform toward their children when they are born not to neglect any of that duty which nature and maternal piety requires 4. Jesus was pleased to be born of a poor Mother in a poor place in a cold winter's night far from home amongst strangers with all the circumstances of humility and poverty And no man will have cause to complain of his course Robe if he remembers the swadling-clothes of this Holy Child nor to be disquieted at his hard Bed when he considers Jesus laid in a manger nor to be discontented at his thin Table when he calls to mind the King of Heaven and Earth was fed with a little breast-milk But since the eternal wisdom of the Father who knew to chuse the good and refuse the evil did chuse a life of Poverty it gives us demonstration that Riches and Honors those idols of the World's esteem are so far from creating true felicities that they are not of themselves eligible in the number of good things however no man is to be ashamed of innocent Poverty of which many wise men make Vows and of which the Holy Jesus made election and his Apostles after him made publick profession And if any man will chuse and delight in the affluence of temporal good things suffering himself to be transported with caitive affections in the pleasures of every day he may well make a question whether he shall speed as well hereafter since God's usual method is that they only who follow Christ here shall be with him for ever 5. The Condition of the person 〈◊〉 was born is here of greatest consideration For he that cried in the Manger that suck'd the paps of a Woman that hath exposed himself to Poverty and a world of inconveniences is the Son of the living God of the same substance with his Father begotten before all Ages before the Morning-stars he is GOD eternal He is also by reason of the personal Union of the Divinity with his Humane nature the Son of God not by Adoption as good Men and beatified Angels are but by an extraordinary and miraculous Generation He is the Heir of his Father's glories and possessions not by succession for his Father cannot die but by an equality of communication He is the express image of his Father's person according to both Natures the miracle and excess of his Godhead being as upon wax imprinted upon all the capacities of his Humanity And after all this he is our Saviour that to our duties of wonder and adoration we may add the affections of love and union as himself besides his being admirable in himself is become profitable to us Verè Verbum hoc est abbreviatum saith the Prophet The eternal Word of the Father is shortned to the dimensions of an infant 6. Here then are concentred the prodigles of Greatness and Goodness of Wisdom and Charity of Meekness and Humility and march all the way in mysterie and incomprehensible mixtures if we consider him in the bosome of his Father where he is seated by the postures of Love and essential Felicity and in the Manger where Love also placed him and an infinite desire to communicate his Felicities to us As he is God his Throne is in the Heaven and he fills all things by his immensity as he is Man he is circumscribed by an uneasie Cradle and cries in a Stable As he is God he is seated upon a super-exalted Throne as Man exposed to the lowest estate of uneasiness and need As God clothed in a robe of Glory at the same instant when you may behold and wonder at his Humanity wrapped in cheap and unworthy Cradle-bands As God he is incircled with millions of Angels as Man in the company of Beasts As God he is the eternal Word of the Father Eternal sustained by himself all-sufficient and without need and yet he submitted himself to a condition imperfect inglorious indigent and necessitous And this consideration is apt and natural to produce great affections of love duty and obedience desires of union and conformity to his sacred Person Life Actions and Laws that we resolve all our thoughts and finally determine all our reason and our passions and capacities upon that saying of St. Paul He that loves not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be accursed 7. Upon the consideration of these Glories if a pious soul shall upon the supports of Faith and Love enter into the Stable where this great King was born and with affections behold every member of the Holy Body and thence pass into the Soul of Jesus we may see a scheme of holy Meditations enough to entertain all the degrees of our love and of our understanding and make the mysterie of the Nativity as fruitful of holy thoughts as it was of Blessings to us And it may serve instead of a description of the Person of Jesus conveyed to us in imperfect and Apocryphal schemes If we could behold his sacred Feet with those affections which the Holy Virgin did we have transmitted to us those Mysteries in story which she had first in part by spiritual and divine infused light and afterwards by observation Those holy Feet tender and unable to support his sacred Body should bear him over
and tyranny over Consciences 14. The duty of Preparation that I here discourse of is such a Preparation as is a disposition to life it is not a matter of convenience or advantage to repent of our sins before the Communion but it is of absolute necessity we perish if we neglect it for we cat 〈◊〉 and Satan enters into us not Christ. And this Preparation is not the act of a day or a week but it is a new state of life no man that is an habitual sinner must come to this Feast till he hath wholly changed his course of life And then according as the actions of infirmity have made 〈◊〉 or greater invasion upon his peace and health so are the acts of Repentance to be proportioned in which the greatness of the prevarications their neighbourhood to death or their frequent repetition and the conduct of a Spiritual man are to give us counsel and determination When a ravening and hungry Wolf is destitute of prey he 〈◊〉 the turf and loads his stomach with the glebe he treads on but as soon as he finds better food he vomits up his first load Our secular and sensual affections are loads of earth upon the Conscience and when we approach to the Table of the Lord to eat the bread of the elect and to drink the wine of Angels we must reject such impure adhesions that holy persons being nourished with holy Symbols may be sanctified and receive the eternal reward of Holiness 15. But as none must come hither but they that are in the state of Grace or Charity and the love of God and their Neighbours and that the abolition of the state of sin is the necessary preparation and is the action of years and was not accepted as sufficient till the expiration of divers years by the Primitive Discipline and in some cases not till the approach of Death so there is another Preparation which is of less necessity which supposes the state of Grace and that oil is burning in our lamps but yet it is a preparation of ornament a trimming up the Soul a dressing the spirit with degrees and instances of Piety and progresses of perfection and it consists in setting apart some portion of our time before the Communion that it be spent in Prayer in Meditations in renewing the vows of holy Obedience in Examining our Consciences in Mortifying our lesser irregularities in Devotions and actions of precise Religion in acts of Faith of Hope of Charity of Zeal and holy desires in acts of Eucharist or Thanksgiving of Joy at the approach of so blessed opportunity and all the acts of Vertue whatsoever which have indefinite relation to this and to other mysteries but yet are specially to be exercised upon this occasion because this is the most perfect of external 〈◊〉 and the most mysterious instrument of sanctification and perfection There is no time or degree to be determined in this Preparation but they to whom much is forgiven will love much and they who 〈◊〉 the excellence and holiness of the Mystery the glory of the Guest that comes to inhabit and the undecency of the closet of their Hearts by reason of the adherencies of impurity the infinite benefit then designed and the increase of degrees by the excellence of these previous acts of Holiness will not be too inquisitive into the necessity of circumstances and measures but do it heartily and devoutly and reverently and as much as they can ever esteeming it necessary that the actions of so great solemnity should by some actions of Piety attending like handmaids be distinguished from common imployments and remarked for the principal and most solemn of religious actions The Primitive Church gave the holy Sacrament to Infants immediately after Baptism and by that act transmitted this Proposition That nothing was of absolute necessity but Innocency and purity from sin and a being in the state of Grace other actions of Religion are excellent addition to the dignity of the person and honour of the mystery but they were such of which Infants were not capable The summ is this After the greatest consociation of religious duties for Preparation no man can be sufficiently worthy to communicate let us take care that we be not unworthy by bringing a guilt with us or the remanent affection to a sin Est gloriosus sanè convictus Die Sed illi qui invitatur non qui invisus est 16. When the happy hour is come in which the Lord vouchsafes to enter into us and dwell with us and be united with his servants we must then do the same acts over again with greater 〈◊〉 intension confess the glories of God and thy own unworthiness praise his mercy with ecstasie of thanksgiving and joy make oblation of thy self of all thy faculties and capacities pray and read and meditate and worship And that thou mayest more opportunely do all this rise early to meet the Bridegroom pray for special assistance enter into the assembly of faithful people chearfully attend there diligently demean thy self reverently and before any other meat or drink receive the Body of thy Saviour with pure hands with holy intention with a heart full of joy and faith and hope and wonder and Eucharist These things I therefore set down irregularly and without method because in these actions no rule can be given to all persons and only such a love and such a Religion in general is to be recommended which will over-run the banks and not 〈◊〉 stand confined within the margent of rules and artificial prescriptions Love and Religion are boundless and all acts of grace relating to the present Mystery are sit and proportioned entertainments of our Lord. This only remember that we are by the Mystery of one bread confederated into one body and the communion of Saints and that the 〈◊〉 which we then commemorate was designed by our Lord for the benefit of all his Church Let us be sure to draw all faithful people into the society of the present Blessing joyning with the holy Man that ministers in prayers and offerings of that Mystery for the 〈◊〉 of all sorts of men of Christ's Catholick Church And it were also an excellent act of Christian communion and agreeable to the practice of the Church in all Ages to make an Oblation to God for the poor that as we are 〈◊〉 by Christ's body so we also should 〈◊〉 Christ's body making such returns as we can a grain of Frankincense in exchange for a Province an act of duty and Christian Charity as Eucharistical for the present Grace that all the body may rejoyce and glory in the Salvation of the Lord. 17. After thou hast received that pledge of immortality and antepast of glory even the Lord's Body in a mystery leave not thy Saviour there alone but attend him with holy thoughts and colloquies of Prayer and Eucharist It was sometime counted infamous for a woman to entertain a second love till the body of her
with purple and crowned him with thorns and put a cane in his hand for a scepter and bowed their knees before him and saluted him with mockery with a Hail King of the Jews and 〈◊〉 beat him and spate upon him and then Pilate brought him forth and shewed this sad spectacle to the people hoping this might move them to compassion who never loved to see a man prosperous and are always troubled to see the same man in misery But the Earth which was cursed for Adam's sake and was sowed with thorns and thistles produced the full harvest of them and the Second Adam gathered them all and made garlands of them as ensigns of his Victory which he was now in pursuit of against Sin the Grave and Hell And we also may make our thorns which are in themselves 〈◊〉 and dolorous to be a Crown if we bear 〈◊〉 patiently and unite them to Christ's Passion and offer them to his honour and bear them in his cause and rejoyce in them for his sake And indeed after such a grove of 〈◊〉 growing upon the head of our Lord to see one of Christ's members soft delicate and effeminate is a great indecency next to this of seeing the Jews use the King of glory with the greatest reproach and infamy 12. But nothing prevailing nor the Innocence of Jesus nor his immunity from the sentence of Herod nor the industry and diligence of Pilate nor the misery nor the sight of the afflicted Lamb of God at last for so God decreed to permit it and Christ to 〈◊〉 it Pilate gave sentence of death upon him having first washed his hands of which God served his end to declare the Innocence of his Son of which in this whole process he was most curious and suffered not the least probability to adhere to him yet Pilate served no end of his nor preserved any thing of his innocence He that 〈◊〉 upon a Prince and cries Saving your honour you are a Tyrant and he that strikes a man upon the face and cries him mercy and undoes him and says it was in jest does just like that person that sins against God and thinks to be excused by saying it was against his Conscience that is washing our hands when they are stained in bloud as if a ceremony of purification were enough to cleanse a soul from the stains of a spiritual impurity So some refuse not to take any Oath in times of Persecution and say it obliges not because it was forced and done against their wills as if the doing of it were washed off by protesting against it whereas the protesting against it declares me criminal if I rather chuse not death than that which I profess to be a sin But all the persons which cooperated in this death were in this life consigned to a fearful judgment after it The Jews took the bloud which Pilate seemed to wash off upon themselves and their children and the bloud of this Paschal Lamb stuck upon their forehead and marked them not to escape but to fall under the sword of the destroying Angel and they perished either by a more hasty death or shortly after in the extirpation and miserable ruine of their Nation And Pilate who had a less share in the crime 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a black character of a secular Judgment for not long after he was by Vitellius the President of Syria sent to Rome to answer to the crimes objected against him by the Jews whom to please he had done so much violence to his Conscience and by 〈◊〉 sentence he was banished to Vienna deprived of all his honours where he lived ingloriously till by impatience of his calamity he killed himself with his own hand And thus the bloud of Jesus shed for the Salvation of the world became to them a Curse and that which purifies the Saints stuck to them that shed it and mingled it not with the tears of Repentance to be a leprosie loathsome and incurable So Manna turns to worms and the wine of Angels to Vineger and Lees when it is received into impure vessels or tasted by wanton palats and the Sun himself produces Rats and Serpents when it reflects upon the dirt of Nilus The PRAYER O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God who wert pleased to 〈◊〉 shame and sorrow to be brought before tribunals to be accused maliciously betrayed treacherously condemned unjustly and scourged most 〈◊〉 suffering the most severe and most unhandsome inflictions which could be procured by potent subtle and extremest malice and didst 〈◊〉 this out of love greater than the love of Mothers more affectionate than the tears of joy and pity dropt from the eyes of most passionate women by these fontinels of bloud issuing forth life and health and pardon upon all thine enemies teach me to apprehend the baseness of Sin in proportion to the greatest of those calamities which my sin made it necessary for thee to susfer that I may hate the cause of thy 〈◊〉 and adore thy mercy and imitate thy charity and copy 〈◊〉 thy patience à nd humility and love thy person to the uttermost extent and degrees of my affections Lord what am I that the eternal Son of God should 〈◊〉 one stripe for me But thy Love is infinite and how great a misery is it to provoke by sin so great a mercy and despise so miraculous a goodness and to do fresh despite to the Son of God But our sins are innumerable and our infirmities are mighty Dearest Jesu pity me for I am accused by my own Conscience and am found guilty I am stripped naked of my Innocence and bound fast by Lust and tormented with stripes and wounds of enraged Appetites But let thy Innocence excuse me the robes of thy Righteousness cloath me thy Bondage set me free and thy Stripes heal me that thou being my Advocate my Physician my Patron and my Lord I may be adopted into the union of thy Merits and partake of the efficacy of thy Sufferings and be crowned as thou art having my sins changed to vertues and my thorns to rays of glory under thee our Head in the participations of Eternity O Holy and immaculate Lamb of God Amen DISCOURSE XX. Of Death and the due manner of Preparation to it 1. THE Holy Spirit of God hath in Scripture revealed to us but one way of preparing to Death and that is by a holy life and there is nothing in all the Book of Life concerning this exercise of address to Death but such advices which suppose the dying person in a state of Grace S. James indeed counsels that in sickness we should send for the Ministers Ecclesiastical and that they pray over us and that we confess our sins and they shall be forgiven that is those prayers are of great efficacy for the removing the sickness and taking off that punishment of sin and healing them in a certain degree according to the efficacy of the ministery and the dispositions or capacities of the sick person But
there but the Grave clothes which he had left behind him To all which let me add while my hand is in these things what Ephrem relates that from this Grave wherein he rested so short a time a kind of Sacred Oil or Unguent was wont to be gathered Gregory of Tours says 't was Manna which even in his time like flour was cast up from the Sepulohre and was carried up and down the World for the curing of diseases This report of our Apostles being yet alive some men made use of to wild and phantastick purposes Beza tells us of an Impostor in his time whom Postellus who vainly boasted that he had the Soul of Adam was wont to call his Brother who publickly prosessed himself to be our S. John and was afterwards burnt at Tholose in France Nor was this any more than what was done in the more early Ages of Christianity For Sulpitius Severus giving us an account of a young Spaniard that first professed himself to be Elias and then Christ himself adds That there was one at the same time in the East who gave out himself to be S. John So fast will Error like circles in the water multiply it self and one mistaken place of Scripture give countenance to an hundred stories that shall be built upon it I have no more to add but what we meet with in the Arabick writer of his life though it little agrees with the preceding passages who reports that there were none present at his burial but his disciple Phogsir probably Proghor or Prochorus one of the seven Deacons and generally said to have been S. John's companion and assistent whom he strictly charged never to discover his Sepulchre to any it may be for the same reason for which it is thought God concealed the body of Moses to prevent the Idolatrous worshipping of his Reliques And accordingly the Turks who conceit him to be buried in the confines of Lydia pay great honour and veneration to his Tomb. 10. S. JO H N seems always to have led a single life and so the Ancients tell us nay S. Ambrose positively affirms that all the Apostles were married except S. John and S. Paul There want not indeed some and especially the middle Writers of the Church who will have our Apostle to have been married and that it was his marriage which our Lord was at in Cana of Galilee invited thither upon the account of his consanguinity and alliance But that being convinced by the Miracle of the Water turned into Wine he immediately quitted his conjugal relation and became one of our Lord's Disciples But this as 〈◊〉 himself confesses is trifling and the issue of fabulous invention a thing wholly unknown to the Fathers and best Writers of the Church and which not only has no just authority to support it but arguments enough to beat it down As for his natural temper he seems as we have observed in his Brother's Life to have been of a more eager and resolute disposition easily apt to be inflamed and provoked which his reduced Age brought to a more staid and a calmer temper He was polished by no study or arts of Learning but what was wanting in that was abundantly made up in the excellent temper and constitution of his mind and that furniture of Divine graces which he was adorned withall His humility was admirable studiously concealing his own worth and honour in all his Epistles as Eusebius long since observed he never puts down the honourable Titles of Apostle or Evangelist but only stiles himself and that too but sometimes Presbyter or Elder alluding probably to his Age as much as Office in his Gospel when he speaks of the Disciple whom Jesus loved he constantly conceals his own name leaving the Reader to conjecture who was meant Love and Charity he practised himself and affectionately pressed upon others our Lord 's great love to him seems to have inspired his Soul with a bigger and more generous charity than the rest 'T is the great vein that runs through his writings and especially his Epistles where he urges it as the great and peculiar Law of Christianity and without which all other pretences to Christian Religion are vain and frivolous useless and insignificant And this was his constant practice to his dying day When Age and weakness grew upon him at Ephesus that he was no longer able to preach to them he used at every publick meeting to be led to the Church and say no more to them than Little children love one another And when his Auditors wearied with the constant repetition of the same thing asked him why he always spoke the same he answered Because it was the command of our Lord and that if they did nothing else this alone was enough 11. BUT the largest measures of his Charity he expressed in the mighty care that he shewed to the Souls of men unweariedly spending himself in the service of the Gospel travelling from East to West to leaven the World with the principles of that holy Religion which he was sent to propagate patiently enduring all torments breaking through all difficulties and discouragements shunning no dangers that he might do good to Souls redeem mens minds from error and idolatry and reduce them from the snares of a debauched and a vicious life Witness one famous instance In his visitation of the Churches near to Ephesus he made choice of a young man whom with a special charge for his instruction and education he committed to the Bishop of that place The 〈◊〉 man undertook the charge instructed his Pupil and baptized him And then thinking he might a little remit the reins of discipline the youth made an ill use of his liberty and was quickly debauched by bad companions making himself Captain to a company of High-way men the most loose cruel and profligate wretches of the Country S. John at his return understanding this and sharply reproving the negligence and unfaithfulness of his Tutor resolved to find him out And without any consideration of what danger he entred upon in venturing himself upon persons of desperate fortunes and forfeited consciences he went to the mountains where their usual haunt was and being here taken by the Sentinel he desired to be brought before their Commander who no sooner espied him coming towards him but immediately fled The aged Apostle followed after but not able to overtake him passionately intreated him to stay promising him to undertake with God for his peace and pardon He did so and both melted into tears and the Apostle having prayed with and for him returned him a true Penitent and Convert to the Church This story we have elsewhere related more at large out of 〈◊〉 as he does from Clemens Alexandrinus since which that Tract it self of Clemens is made publick to the World 12. NOR was it the least instance of his care of the Church and charity to the Souls of men
Ascension of JESUS p. 419. Considerations upon the Accidents happening in the interval after the Death of the Holy JESUS until his Resurrection p. 423. THE PREFACE 1. CHRISTIAN Religion hath so many exterior advantages to its Reputation and Advancement from the Author and from the Ministers from the fountain of its Origination and the chanels of Conveyance GOD being the Author the Word incarnate being the great Doctor and Preacher of it his Life and Death being its Consignation the Holy Spirit being the great Argument and demonstration of it and the Apostles the Organs and Conduits of its dissemination that it were glorious beyond all opposition and disparagement though we should not consider the Excellency of its Matter and the Certainty of its Probation and the Efficacy of its Power and the Perfection and rare accomplishment of its Design But I consider that Christianity is therefore very little understood because it is reproached upon that pretence which its very being and design does infinitely confute It is esteemed to be a Religion contrary in its Principles or in its Precepts to that wisdom whereby the World is governed and Common-wealths increase and Greatness is acquired and Kings go to war and our ends of Interest are served and promoted and that it is an Institution so wholly in order to another World that it does not at all communicate with this neither in its End nor in its Discourses neither in the Policy nor in the Philosophy and therefore as the Doctrine of the Cross was entertained at first in scorn by the Greeks in offence and indignation by the Jews so is the whole Systeme and collective Body of Christian Philosophy esteemed imprudent by the Politicks of the world and flat and irrational by some men of excellent wit and submile discourse who because the permissions and dictates of natural true and essential Reason are at no hand to be contradicted by any superinduced Discipline think that whatsoever seems contrary to their Reason is also violent to our Nature and offers indeed a good to us but by ways unnatural and unreasonable And I think they are very great strangers to the present affairs and perswasions of the World who know not that Christianity is very much undervalued upon this principle men insensibly becoming unchristian because they are perswaded that much of the Greatness of the World is contradicted by the Religion But certainly no mistake can be greater For the Holy Jesus by his Doctrine did instruct the Understandings of men made their Appetites more obedient their Reason better principled and argumentative with less deception their Wills apter for noble choices their Governments more prudent their present Felicities greater their hopes more excellent and that duration which was intended to them by their Creator he made manifest to be a state of glory and all this was to be done and obtained respectively by the ways of Reason and Nature such as God gave to Man then when at first he designed him to a noble and an immortal condition the Christian Law being for the substance of it nothing but the restitution and perfection of the Law of Nature And this I shall represent in all the parts of its natural progression and I intend it not only as a Preface to the following Books but for an Introduction and Invitation to the whole Religion 2. For God when he made the first emanations of his eternal Being and created Man as the End of all his productions here below designed him to an End such as himself was pleased to chuse for him and gave him abilities proportionable to attain that End God gave Man a reasonable and an intelligent nature And to this noble Nature he designed as noble an End he intended Man should live well and happily in proportion to his appetites and in the reasonable doing and enjoying those good things which God made him naturally to desire For since God gave him proper and peculiar Appetites with proportion to their own objects and gave him Reason and abilities not only to perceive the sapidness and relish of those objects but also to make reflex acts upon such perceptions and to perceive that he did perceive which was a rare instrument of pleasure and pain respectively it is but reasonable to think that God who created him in mercy did not only proportion a Being to his nature but did also provide satisfaction for all those Appetites and desires which himself had created and put into him For if he had not then the Being of a man had been nothing but a state of perpetual Affliction and the creation of men had been the greatest Unmercifulness in the world disproportionate objects being mere instances of affliction and those unsatisfied appetites nothing else but instruments of torment 3. Therefore that this intendment of God and Nature should be effected that is that Man should become happy it is naturally necessary that all his regular appetites should have an object appointed them in the fruition of which Felicity must consist Because nothing is Felicity but when what was reasonably or orderly desired is possessed for the having what is not desired or the wanting of what we desired or the desiring what we should not are the several constituent parts of Infelicity and it can have no other constitution 4. Now the first Appetite Man had in order to his great End was to be as perfect as he could that is to be as like the best thing he knew as his nature and condition would permit And although by Adam's sancy and affection to his Wife and by God's appointing fruit for him we see the lower Appetites were first provided for yet the first Appetite which Man had as he distinguishes from lower creatures was to be like God for by that the Devil tempted him and in order to that he had naturally sufficient instruments and abilities For although by being abused with the Devil's sophistry he chose an incompetent instrument yet because it is naturally certain that Love is the greatest assimilation of the object and the faculty Adam by loving God might very well approach nearer him according as he could And it was natural to Adam to love God who was his Father his Creator the fountain of all good to him and of excellency in himself and whatsoever is understood to be such it is as natural for us to love and we do it for the same reasons for which we love any thing else and we cannot love for any other reason but for one or both these in their proportion apprehended 5. But because God is not only excellent and good but by being supreme Lord hath power to give us what Laws he pleases Obedience to his Laws therefore becomes naturally but consequently necessary when God decrees them because he does make himself an enemy to all Rebels and disobedient sons by affixing penalties to the transgressors And therefore Disobedience is naturally inconsistent not only with love to our selves
take into their hands instruments of musick and sing Glory be to God on high First signifying to us that the Incarnation of the Holy Jesus was a very great instrument of the glorification of God and those divine Perfections in which he is chiefly pleased to communicate himself to us were in nothing manifested so much as in the mysteriousness of this work Secondly And in vain doth man satisfie himself with complacencies and ambitious designs upon earth when he sees before him God in the form of a servant humble and poor and crying and an infant full of need and weakness 4. But God hath pleased to reconcile his Glory with our eternal Benefit and that also was part of the Angels song In earth peace to men of good will For now we need not with Adam to fly from the presence of the Lord saying I heard thy voice and I was afraid and hid my self for he from whom our sins made us once to flie now weeps and is an infant in his Mother's arms seeking strange means to be reconciled to us hath forgotten all his anger and is swallowed up with love and 〈◊〉 with irradiations of amorous affections and good will and the effects of this good will are not referred only to persons of heroical and eminent graces and operations of vast and expensive charities of prodigious abstinencies of eremitical retirements of ascetical diet of perfect Religion and canoniz'd persons but to all men of good will whose Souls are hallowed with holy purposes and pious desires though the beauties of the Religion and holy thoughts were not spent in exterior acts nor called out by the opportunities of a rich and expressive fortune 5. But here we know where the seat and regiment of Peace is placed and all of it must pass by us and descend upon us as duty and reward It proceeds from the Word Incarnate from the Son of God undertaking to reconcile us to his Father and it is ministred and consigned unto us by every event and act of Providence whether it be decyphered in characters of paternal Indulgence or of Correction or Absolution For that is not Peace from above to have all things according to our humane and natural wishes but to be in favour with God that is Peace always remembring that to be chastised by him is not a certain testimony of his mere wrath but to all his servants a character of love and of paternal provision since he chastises every son whom he receives Whosoever seeks to avoid all this world's Adversity can never find Peace but he only who hath resolved all his Affections and placed them in the heart of God he who denies his own Will and hath killed Self-love and all those enemies within that make Afflictions to become Miseries indeed and full of bitterness he only enjoys this Peace and in proportion to every man's Mortification and Self-denial so are the degrees of his Peace and this is the Peace which the Angel proclaimed at the enunciation of that Birth which taught Humility and Contempt of things below and all their vainer glories by the greatest argument in the world even the Poverty of God incarnate And if God sent his own natural only-begotten and beloved Son in all the 〈◊〉 of Poverty and contempt that person is vain who thinks God will love him better than he loved his own Son or that he will express his love any other or gentler way than to make him partaker of the fortune of his eldest Son There is one other postern to the dwellings of Peace and that is good will to Men for so much Charity as we have to others such a measure of Peace also we may enjoy at home For Peace was only proclaimed to Men of good will to them that are at peace with God and all the World 6. But the Angel brought the Message to Shepherds to persons simple and mean and humble persons likely to be more apprehensive of the Mystery and less of the Scandal of the Poverty of the Messias for they whose custom or affections dwell in secular Pomps who are not used by Charity or Humility to stoop to an Evenness and consideration of their brethren of equal natures though of unequal fortunes are persons of all the world most indisposed and removed from the understanding of spiritual excellencies especially when they do not come clothed with advantages of the world and of such beauties which they admire God himself in Poverty comes in a prejudice to them that love Riches and Simplicity is Folly to crafty persons a Mean birth is an ignoble stain Beggery is a scandal and the Cross an unanswerable objection But the Angel's moral in the circumstance of his address and inviting the poor Shepherds to Bethlehem is That none are fit to come to Christ but those who are poor in spirit despisers of the world simple in their hearts without craft and secular designs and therefore neither did the Angel tell the story to Herod nor to the Scribes and Pharisees whose ambition had ends contradictory to the simplicity and poverty of the Birth of Jesus 7. These Shepherds when they conversed with Angels were watching over their flocks by night no Revellers but in a painful and dangerous imployment the work of an honest Calling securing their Folds against incursions of wild beasts which in those Countries are not seldom or infrequent And Christ being the great Shepherd and possibly for the analogie's sake the sooner manifested to Shepherds hath made his Ministers overseers of their Flocks distinguished in their particular Folds and conveys the mysteriousness of his Kingdom first to the Pastors and by their ministery to the Flocks But although all of them be admitted to the ministery yet those only to the interiour recesses and nearer imitations of Jesus who are watchful over their Flocks assiduous in their labours painful in their sufferings present in the dangers of the Sheep ready to interpose their persons and sacrifice their lives these are Shepherds who first converse with Angels and finally shall enter into the presence of the Lord. But besides this symbol we are taught in the significations of the letter That he that is diligent in the business of an honest Calling is then doing service to God and a work so pleasing to him who hath appointed the sons of men to labour that to these Shepherds he made a return and recompence by the conversation of an Angel and hath advanced the reputation of an honest and a mean imployment to such a testimony of acceptance that no honest person though busied in meaner offices may ever hereafter in the estimation of Christ's disciples become contemptible 8. The signs which the Angel gave to discover the Babe were no marks of Lustre and Vanity but they should find 1. a Babe 2. swadled 3. lying in a Manger the first a testimony of his Humility the second of his Poverty the third of his Incommodity and uneasiness for Christ came to combate
sweetnesses which represent the glory of the reward by the Antepasts and refreshments dispensed even in the ruggedness of the way and incommodities of the journey All other delights are the pleasures of Beasts or the sports of Children these are the Antepasts and preventions of the full Feasts and overflowings of Eternity 10. When they came to Bethlehem and the Star pointed them to a Stable they entred in and being enlightned with a Divine Ray proceeding from the face of the Holy Child and seeing through the cloud and passing through the scandal of his mean Lodging and poor condition they bowed themselves to the earth first giving themselves an Oblation to this great King then they made offering of their Gifts for a man's person is first accepted then his Gift God first regarded Abel and then accepted his Offering which we are best taught to understand by the present instance for it means no more but that all outward Services and Oblations are made acceptable by the prior presentation of an inward Sacrifice If we have first presented our selves then our Gift is pleasant as coming but to express the truth of the first Sacrifice but if our Persons be not first made a Holocaust to God the lesser Oblations of outward Presents are like Sacrifices without Salt and Fire nothing to make them pleasant or religious For all other sences of this Proposition charge upon God the distinguishing and acceptation of Persons against which he solemnly protests God regards no man's Person but according to the doing of his Duty but then God is said first to accept the Person and then the Gist when the Person is first sanctified and given to God by the vows and habits of a holy life and then all the actions of his Religion are homogeneal to their principle and accepted by the acceptation of the man 11. These Magi presented to the Holy Babe Gold Frankincense and Myrrh protesting their Faith of three Articles by the symbolical Oblation By Gold that he was a King by Incense that he was a God by Myrrh that he was a Man And the Presents also were representative of interiour Vertues the Myrrh signifying Faith Mortification Chastity Compunction and all the actions of the Purgative way of Spiritual life the Incense signifying Hope Prayer Obedience good Intention and all the actions and Devotions of the Illuminative the giving the Gold representing Love to God and our Neighbours the Contempt of riches Poverty of spirit and all the eminencies and spiritual riches of the Unitive life And these Oblations if we present to the Holy Jesus both our Persons and our Gifts shall be accepted our Sins shall be purged our Understandings enlightned and our Wills united to this Holy Child and entitled to a communion of all his Glories 12. And thus in one view and two Instances God hath drawn all the world to himself by his Son Jesus in the Instance of the Shepherds and the Arabian Magi Jews and Gentiles Learned and Unlearned Rich and Poor Noble and Ignoble that in him all Nations and all Conditions and all Families and all persons might be blessed having called all by one Star or other by natural Reason or by the secrets of Philosophy by the Revelations of the Gospel or by the ministery of Angels by the Illuminations of the Spirit or by the Sermons and Dictates of spiritual Fathers and hath consigned this Lesson to us That we must never appear before the Lord empty offering Gifts to him by the expences or by the affections of Charity either the worshipping or the oblations of Religion either the riches of the World or the love of the Soul for if we cannot bring Gold with the rich Arabians we may with the poor Shepherds come and kiss the Son lest he be angry and in all cases come and serve him with fear and reverence and spiritual rejoycings The PRAYER MOst Holy Jesu Thou art the Glory of thy people Israel and a light to the Gentiles and wert pleased to call the Gentiles to the adoration and knowledge of thy sacred Person and Laws communicating the inestimable riches of thy holy Discipline to all with an universal undistinguishing Love give unto us spirits docible pious prudent and ductile that no motion or invitation of Grace be ineffectual but may produce excellent effects upon us and the secret whispers of thy Spirit may prevail upon our Affections in order to Piety and Obedience as certainly as the loudest and most clamorous Sermons of the Gospel Create in us such Excellencies as are fit to be presented to thy glorious Majesty accept of the Oblation of my self and my entire services but be thou pleased to verifie my Offering and secure the possession to thy self that the enemy may not pollute the Sacrifice or divide the Gift or question the Title but that I may be wholly thine and for ever clarifie my Understanding sanctifie my Will replenish my Memory with arguments of Piety then shall I present to thee an Oblation rich and precious as the treble gift of the Levantine Princes Lord I am thine reject me not from thy favour exclude me not from thy presence then shall I serve thee all the days of my life and partake of the glories of thy Kingdom in which thou reignest gloriously and eternally Amen SECT V. Of the Circumcision of JESUS and his Presentation in the Temple The Circumcision of Iesus S. LUKE 2. 21. And when eight daies were accomphshed for the circumcising of the Child his name was called Iesus which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the Wombe The Purification and Presentation S. LUKE 2. 22. And when the dayes of her purification were accomplished they brought him to Ierusalem to present him to the Lord. 1. AND now the Blessed Saviour of the World began to do the work of his Mission and our Redemption and because Man had prevaricated all the Divine Commandments to which all humane nature respectively to the persons of several capacities was obliged and therefore the whole Nature was obnoxious to the just rewards of its demerits first Christ was to put that Nature he had assumed into a saveable condition by fulfilling his Father's preceptive will and then to reconcile it actually by suffering the just deservings of its Prevarications He therefore addresses himself to all the parts of an active Obedience and when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the Child he exposed his tender body to the sharpness of the circumcising stone and shed his bloud in drops giving an earnest of those rivers which he did afterwards pour out for the cleansing all Humane nature and extinguishing the wrath of God 2. He that had no sin nor was conceived by natural generation could have no adherences to his Soul or Body which needed to be pared away by a Rite and cleansed by a Mystery neither indeed do we find it expressed that Circumcision was ordained for abolition or pardon of original sin it
Princes in the conspiracy of Dathan that 's for the Temporal And to encourage this Duty I shall use no other words than those of Achilles in Homer They that obey in this world are better than they that command in Hell A PRAYER for the Grace of Holy OBEDIENCE O Lord and Blessed Saviour Jesus by whose Obedience many became righteous and reparations were made of the ruines brought to humane Nature by the Disobedience of Adam thou camest into the world with many great and holy purposes concerning our Salvation and hast given us a great precedent of Obedience which that thou mightest preserve to thy Heavenly Father thou didst neglect thy Life and becamest obedient even to the death of the Cross O let me imit ate so blessed example and by the merits of thy Obedience let me obtain the grace of Humility and Abnegation of all my own desires in the clearest Renunciation of my Will that I may will and refuse in conformity to thy sacred Laws and holy purposes that I may do all thy will chearfully chusingly humbly confidently and continually and thy will may be done upon me with much mercy and fatherly dispensation of thy Providence Amen 2. LOrd let my Understanding adhere to and be satisfied in the excellent 〈◊〉 of thy Commandments let my Affections dwell in their desires and all my other Faculties be set on daily work for performance of them and let my love to obey thee make me dutiful to my Superiors upon whom the impresses of thy Authority are set by thine own hand that I may never despise their Persons nor refuse their Injunctions nor chuse mine own work nor murmur at their burthens nor dispute the prudence of the Sanction nor excuse my self nor pretend 〈◊〉 or impossibilities but that I may be 〈◊〉 in my desires and resigned to the will of those whom thou hast set over me that since all thy Creatures obey thy word I alone may not disorder the Creation and cancel those bands and intermedial links of Subordination whereby my duty should pass to 〈◊〉 and thy glory but that my Obedience being united to thy Obedience I may also have my portion in the 〈◊〉 of thy Kingdom O Lord and Blessed Saviour Jesus Amen Considerations upon the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple 1. THE Holy Virgin-Mother according to the Law of Moses at the expiration of a certain time came to the Temple to be purified although in her sacred Parturition she had contracted no Legal impurity yet she exposed her self to the publick opinion and common reputation of an ordinary condition and still amongst all generations she is in all circumstances accounted blessed and her reputation no tittle altered save only that it is made the more sacred by this testimony of her Humility But this we are taught from the consequence of this instance That if an End principally designed in any Duty should be supplied otherwise in any particular person the Duty is nevertheless to be observed and then the obedience and publick order is reason enough for the observation though the proper End of its designation be wanting in the single person Thus is Fasting designed for mortification of the flesh and killing all its unruly appetites and yet Married persons who have another remedy and a Virgin whose Temple is hallowed by a gift and the strict observances of Chastity may be tied to the Duty and if they might not then Fasting were nothing else but a publication of our impure desires and an exposing the person to the confidence of a bold temptation whilst the young men did observe the Faster to be tempted from within But the Holy Virgin from these acts of which in signification she had no need because she sinned not in the Conception nor was impure in the production expressed other Vertues besides Obedience such as were humble thoughts of her self Devotion and Reverence to publick Sanctions Religion and Charity which were like the pure leaves of the whitest Lily fit to represent the beauties of her innocence but were veiled and shadowed by that sacramental of the Mosaick Law 2. The Holy Virgin received the greatest favour that any of the Daughters of Adam ever did and knowing from whence and for whose glory she had received it returns the Holy Jesus in a Present to God again for she had nothing so precious as himself to make oblation of and besides that every first-born among the Males was holy to the Lord this Child had an eternal and essential Sanctity and until he came into the World and was made apt for her to make present of him there was never in the world any act of Adoration proportionable to the honour of the great God but now there was and the Holy Virgin made it when she presented the Holy Child Jesus And now besides that we are taught to return to God whatsoever we have received from him if we unite our Offerings and Devotions to this holy Present we shall by the merit and excellency of this Oblation exhibit to God an Offertory in which he cannot but delight for the combination's sake and society of his Holy Son 3. The Holy Mother brought five Sicles and a pair of Turtle-doves to redeem the Lamb of God from the Anathema because every first-born was to be sacrificed to God or redeemed if it was clean it was the poor man's price and the Holy Jesus was never set at the greater prices when he was estimated upon earth For he that was Lord of the Kingdom chose his portion among the poor of this World that he might advance the poor to the riches of his inheritance and so it was from his Nativity hither For at his Birth he was poor at his Circumcision poor and in the likeness of a sinner at his Presentation poor and like a sinner and a servant for he chose to be redeemed with an ignoble price The five Sicles were given to the Priest for the redemption of the Child and if the Parents were not able he was to be a servant of the Temple and to minister in the inferiour offices to the Priest and this was God's seizure and possession of him for although all the servants of God are his inheritance yet the Ministers of Religion who derive their portion of temporals from his title who live upon the Corban and eat the meat of the Altar which is God's peculiar and come nearer to his Holiness by the addresses of an immediate ministration are God's own upon another and a distinct challenge But because Christ was to be the Prince of another Ministry and the chief Priest of another Order he was redeemed from attending the Mosaick Rites which he came to 〈◊〉 that he might do his Father's business in establishing the Evangelical Only remember that the Ministers of Religion are but God's 〈◊〉 as they are not Lords of God's portion and therefore must dispense it like Stewards not like Masters so the People are 〈◊〉 their Patrons in paying nor
to be quitted But it is S. Chrysostom's Simile As a Lamb sucking the breast of its dam and Mother moves the head from one part to another till it hath found a distilling fontinel and then it fixes till it be satisfied or the 〈◊〉 cease dropping so should we in Meditation reject such materials as are barren like the tops of hills and six upon such thoughts which nourish and refresh and there dwell till the nourishment be drawn forth or so much of it as we can then temperately digest 14. Fifthly In Meditation strive rather for Graces than for Gifts for affections in the way of Vertue more than the overslowings of sensible Devotion and therefore if thou findest any thing by which thou mayest be better though thy spirit do not actually rejoyce or find any gust or relish in the manducation yet chuse it greedily For although the chief end of Meditation be Affection and not Determinations intellectual yet there is choice to be had of the Affections and care must be taken that the affections be desires of Vertue or repudiations and aversions from something criminal not joys and transportations spiritual comforts and complacencies for they are no part of our duty sometimes they are encouragements and sometimes rewards sometimes they depend upon habitude and disposition of body and seem great matters when they have little in them and are more bodily than spiritual like the gift of tears and yerning of the bowels and sometimes they are illusions and temptations at which if the Soul stoops and be greedy after they may prove like Hippomenes's golden Apples to Atalanta retard our course and possibly do some hazard to the whole race And this will be nearer reduced to practice if we consider the variety of matter which is fitted to the Meditation in several states of men travelling towards Heaven 15. For the first beginners in Religion are imployed in the mastering of their first Appetites casting out their Devils exterminating all evil customs lessening the proclivity of habits and countermanding the too-great forwardness of vicious inclinations and this which Divines call the Purgative way is wholly spent in actions of Repentance Mortification and Self-denial and therefore if a penitent person snatches at Comforts or the tastes of sensible Devotion his Repentance is too delicate it is but a rod of Roses and Jessamine If God sees the spirit broken all in pieces and that it needs a little of the oyl of gladness for its support and restitution to the capacities of its duty he will give it but this is not to be designed nor snatched at in the Meditation Tears of joy are not good expressions nor instruments of Repentance we must not gather grapes from thorns nor figs from thistles no refreshments to be looked for here but such only as are necessary for support and when God sees they are let not us trouble our selves he will provide them But the Meditations which are prompt to this Purgative way and practice of first beginners are not apt to produce delicacies but in the sequel and consequent of it Afterwards it brings forth the pleasant fruit of righteousness but for the present it hath no joy in it no joy of sense though much satisfaction to Reason And such are Meditations of the Fall of Angels and Man the Ejection of them from Heaven of our Parents from Paradise the Horrour and obliquity of Sin the Wrath of God the severity of his Anger Mortification of our body and spirit Self-denial the Cross of Christ Death and Hell and Judgment the terrours of an evil Conscience the insecurities of a Sinner the unreasonableness of Sin the troubles of Repentance the Worm and sting of a burthened spirit the difficulties of rooting out evil Habits and the utter abolition of Sin if these nettles bear honey we may fill our selves but such sweetnesses spoil the operations of these bitter potions Here therefore let your addresses to God and your mental prayers be affectionate desires of Pardon humble considerations of our selves thoughts of revenge against our Crimes designs of Mortification indefatigable solicitations for Mercy expresses of shame and confusion of face and he meditates best in the purgative way that makes these affections most operative and high 16. After our first step is taken and the punitive part of Repentance is resolved on and begun and put forward into good degrees of progress we then enter into the Illuminative way of Religion and set upon the acquist of Vertues and the purchase of spiritual Graces and therefore our Meditations are to be proportioned to the design of that imployment such as are considerations of the Life of Jesus Examples of Saints reasons of Vertue means of acquiring them designations of proper exercises to every pious habit the Eight Beatitudes the gifts and fruits of the Holy Ghost the Promises of the Gospel the Attributes of God as they are revealed to represent God to be infinite and to make us Religious the Rewards of Heaven excellent and select Sentences of holy persons to be as incentives of Piety These are the proper matter for Proficients in Religion But then the affections producible from these are love of vertue desires to imitate the Holy Jesus affections to Saints and holy persons conformity of choice subordination to God's will election of the ways of Vertue satisfaction of the Understanding in the ways of Religion and resolutions to pursue them in the midst of all discomforts and persecutions and our mental prayers or entercourse with God which are the present emanations of our Meditations must be in order to these affections and productions from those and in all these yet there is safety and piety and no seeking of our selves but designs of Vertue in just reason and duty to God and for his sake that is for his commandment And in all these particulars if there be such a sterility of spirit that there be no end served but of spiritual profit we are never the worse all that God requires of us is that we will live well and repent in just measure and right manner and he that doth so hath meditated well 17. From hence if a pious Soul passes to affections of greater sublimity and intimate and more immediate abstracted and immaterial love it is well only remember that the love God requires of us is an operative material and communicative love If ye love me keep my Commandments so that still a good life is the effect of the sublimest Meditation and if we make our duty sure behind us ascend up as high into the Mountain as you can so your ascent may consist with the securities of your person the condition of infirmity and the interests of your duty According to the saying of 〈◊〉 Our empty saying of 〈◊〉 and reciting verses in honour of his Name please not God so well as the imitation of him does advantage to us and a devout 〈◊〉 pleases the Spouse better than an idle Panegyrick Let your work
meat and tears our drink which although they are unpleasant and harsh to natural appetites yet by the operation and influences of God's Holy Spirit they are made instruments of health and life and Salvation 12. The Devil perceiving Jesus to be a person of greater eminency and perfection than to be moved by sensual and low desires makes a second assault by a Temptation something more spiritual and tempts him to Presumption and indiscreet confidence to a throwing himself down from the pinnacles of the Temple upon the stock of Predestination that God might secure him by the ministery of Angels and so prove his being the Son of God And indeed it is usual with the Devil when severe persons have so much mortified their lower appetites that they are not easily overcome by an invitation of carnality or intemperance to stir them to opinions of their own Sanctity and make their first escaping prove their second and greater dangers But that the Devil should perswade Jesus to throw himself down because he was the Son of God was an invitation to no purpose save only that it gave occasion to this truth That God's Providence secures all his sons in the ways of Nature and while they are doing their duty but loves not to be tempted to acts unreasonable and unnecessary God will protect his servants in or from all evils happening without their knowledge or against their will but not from evils of their own procuring Heron an inhabitant of the Desart suffered the same Temptation and was overcome by it for he died with his fall sinfully and ingloriously For the caresses of God's love to his Saints and servants are security against all but themselves The Devil and all the World offer to do them mischief but then they shall be safe because they are innocent if they once offer to do the same to themselves they lose their Protection because they lost their Prudence and their Charity But here also it will concern all those who by their eminent imployment and greater ministeries in Ecclesiasticals are set upon the pinnacle of the Temple to take care that the Devil tempt not them to a precipice a fall from so great a height will break the bones in pieces and yet there also the station is less firm the posture most uneasie the prospect vertiginous and the Devil busie and desirous to thrust us headlong 13. S. Hierom here observes well the Devil intending mischief to our Blessed Saviour invited him to cast himself down He may perswade us to a fall but cannot precipitate us without our own act And it is an infinite mercy in God that the Devil who is of malice infinite is of so restrained and limited a power that he can do us no ghostly disadvantage but by perswading us to do it our selves And then it will be a strange imprudence to lay violent and unreasonable hands upon our selves and do that mischief which our strongest and most malicious Adversary cannot or to be invited by the only Rhetorick of a dog's barking to come near him to untie his chain to unloose his muzzle for no other end but that we may be bitten Just such a fool is every person that consents to the Temptations of the Devil 14. By this time the Devil began to perceive that this was the Son of God and designed to be the King of all the World and therefore resolved for the last assault to profer him the Kingdoms of the World thinking Ambition more likely to ruine him because he knew it was that which prevailed upon himself and all those fallen Stars the Angels of Darkness That the Devil told a lie it is most likely when he said he had power to dispose the Kingdoms of the World for originally and by proper inherent right God alone disposes all Governments but it is also certain that the Devil is a person capable of a delegate imployment in some great mutation of States and many probabilities have been observed by wise personages perswading that the Grandeur of the Roman Empire was in the degrees of increment and decrement permitted to the power and managing of the Devil that the greatness of that Government being in all appearance full of advantage to Satan's Kingdom and imployed for the dis-improvement of the weak beginnings and improbable increase of Christianity might give lustre and demonstration to it that it came from God since the great permissions of power made to the Devil and acted with all art and malice in defiance of the Religion could produce no other effect upon it but that it made it grow greater and the greatness was made more miraculous since the Devil when his chain was off fain would but could not suppress it 15. The Lamb of God that heard him with patience tempt him to do himself a mischief and to throw himself headlong could by no means endure it when he tempted to a direct dishonouring of God Our own injuries are opportunities of patience but when the glory of God and his immediate Honour is the question then is the occasion and precise minute for the 〈◊〉 of a clear-shining and unconsuming Zeal But the care of God's Glory had so filled and imployed all the Faculties of Jesus that he takes no notice of the offer and it were well also that we had fewer opinions of the lustre of worldly dignities or at least that we in imitation of our Blessed Master should resuse to accept all the World when it is to be bought of the Devil at the expence of a deadly sin For that Government cannot be very honourable that makes us slaves to the worst of Tyrants and all those Princes and great personages who by injury and usurpation possess and invade others rights would do well to consider that a Kingdom is too dearly paid for if the condition be first to worship the Devil 16. When the Devil could do no good he departed for a time If he could ever have spied a time of returning he wanted not will nor malice to observe and use it And although Jesus was a person without danger yet I doubt not but the Holy Ghost described that circumstance that we should not have the securities of a deep peace when we have had the success of conquerors for a surprise is most full of horror and of more certain ruine so that we have no security but a perpetual observation that together with the grace of God who takes care of all his servants and will drive away the Tempter when he pleases and help us always when we need is as great an argument for our confidence and encouragement to our prayers and address to God as it is safety to our person and honour to our victory And let us account it our honour that the trials of Temptation which is the greatest sadness of our condition are hallowed by the Temptation of Jesus and our condition assured by his assistances and the assistances procured by our Prayers most easily upon
was necessary for Religion therefore to abstain from Suits of Law and servile works but such works as are of necessity and charity which to observe are of themselves a very good Religion is a necessary duty of the day and to do acts of publick Religion is the other part of it So much is made matter of duty by the intervention of Authority and though the Church hath made no more prescriptions in this God hath made none at all yet he who keeps the Day most strictly most religiously he keeps it best and most consonant to the design of the Church and the ends of Religion and the opportunity of the present leisure and the interests of his Soul The acts of Religion proper for the Day are Prayers and publick Liturgies Preaching Catechizing acts of Charity Visiting sick persons acts of Eucharist to God of Hospitality to our poor neighbours of friendliness and civility to all reconciling differences and after the publick Assemblies are dissolved any act of direct Religion to God or of ease and remission to Servants or whatsoever else is good in Manners or in Piety or in Mercy What is said of this great Feast of the Christians is to be understood to have a greater 〈◊〉 and obligation in the Anniversary of the Resurrection of the Ascension of the Nativity of our Blessed Saviour and of the descent of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost And all days festival to the honour of God in remembrance of the holy Apostles and Martyrs and departed Saints as they are with prudence to be chosen and retained by the Church so as not to be unnecessary or burthensome or useless so they are to be observed by us as instances of our love of the communion of Saints and our thankfulness for the blessing and the example 26. Honour thy Father and thy Mother This Commandment Christ made also to be Christian by his frequent repetition and mention of it in his Sermons and Laws and so ordered it that it should be the band of civil Government and Society In the Decalogue God sets this Precept immediately after the duties that concern himself our duty to Parents being in the consines with our duty to God the Parents being in order of nature next to God the cause of our being and production and the great Almoners of Eternity conveying to us the essences of reasonable Creatures and the charities of Heaven And when our Blessed Saviour in a Sermon to the 〈◊〉 spake of duty to Parents he rescued it from the impediments of a vain tradition and secured this Duty though against a pretence of Religion towards God telling us that God would not himself accept a gift which we took from our Parents needs This duty to Parents is the very 〈◊〉 and band of Commonwealths He that honours his Parents will also love his Brethren derived from the same loins he will dearly account of all his relatives and persons of the same cognation and so Families are united and 〈◊〉 them Cities and Societies are framed And because Parents and Patriarchs of 〈◊〉 and of Nations had regal power they who by any change 〈◊〉 in the care and government of Cities and Kingdomes succeeded in the power and authority of Fathers and became so in estimate of Law and true Divinity to all their people So that the Duty here commanded is due to all our Fathers in the sense of Scripture and Laws not onely to our natural but to our civil Fathers that is to Kings and Governours And the Scripture adds Mothers for they also being instruments of the blessing are the objects of the Duty The duty is Honour that is Reverence and Support if they shall need it And that which our Blessed Saviour calls not 〈◊〉 our Parents in S. Matthew is called in S. Mark doing nothing for them and Honour is expounded by S. Paul to be maintenance as well as reverence Then we honour our Parents if with great readiness we minister to their necessities and communicate our estate and attend them in sicknesses and supply their wants and as much as lies in us give them support who gave us being 27. Thou shalt do no Murther so it was said to them of old time He that kills shall be guilty of Judgment that is he is to die by the sentence of the Judge To this Christ makes an appendix But I say unto you he that is angry with his Brother without a cause shall be in danger of the Judgment This addition of our Blessed Saviour as all the other which are severer explications of the Law than the Jews admitted was directed against the vain and imperfect opinion of the Lawyers who thought to be justified by their external works supposing if they were innocent in matter of fact God would require no more of them than Man did and what by custome or silence of the Laws was not punishable by the Judge was harmless before God and this made them to trust in the letter to neglect the duties of Repentance to omit asking pardon for their secret irregularities and the obliquities and aversations of their spirits and this S. Paul also complains of that neglecting the righteousness of God they sought to establish their own that is according to Man's judgment But our Blessed Saviour tells them that such an innocence is not enough God requires more than conformity and observation of the fact and exteriour 〈◊〉 placing Justice not in legal innocency or not being condemned in judgment of the Law and humane judicature but in the righteousness of the spirit also for the first acquits us before man but by this we shall be held upright in judgment before the Judge of all the world And therefore besides abstinence from murther or actual wounds Christ forbids all anger without cause against our Brother that is against any man 28. By which not the first motions are forbidden the twinklings of the eye as the Philosophers call them the pro-passions and sudden and irresistible alterations for it is impossible to prevent them unless we could give our selves a new nature any more than we can refuse to wink with our eye when a sudden blow is offered at it or refuse to yawn when we see a yawning sleepy person but by frequent and habitual mortification and by continual watchfulness and standing in readiness against all inadvertencies we shall lessen the inclination and account fewer sudden irreptions A wise and meek person should not kindle at all but after violent and great collision and then if like a flint he sends a spark out it must as soon be extinguished as it shews and cool as soon as sparkle But however the sin is not in the natural disposition But when we entertain it though it be as 〈◊〉 expresses it cum voluntate non 〈◊〉 without a determination of revenge then it begins to be a sin Every indignation
a great calamity within a little while after the Spirit of God had sent them two Epistles by the ministery of S. Paul their Cities were buried in an Earthquake and yet we have reason to think they were Churches beloved of God and Congregations of holy People The PRAYER OEternal and powerful God thou just and righteous Governour of the world who callest all orders of men by Precepts Promises and Threatnings by Mercies and by Judgments teach us to admire and adore all the Wisdome the effects and infinite varieties of thy Providence and make us to dispose our selves so by Obedience by Repentance by all the manners of Holy living that we may never provoke thee to jealousie much less to wrath and indignation against us Keep far from us the Sword of the destroying Angel and let us never perish in the publick expresses of thy wrath in diseases Epidemical with the furies of War with calamitous sudden and horrid Accidents with unusual Diseases unless that our so strange fall be more for thy glory and our eternal benefit and then thy will be done We beg thy grace that we may chearfully conform to thy holy will and pleasure Lord open our understandings that we may know the meaning of thy voice and the signification of thy language when thou speakest 〈◊〉 Heaven in signs and Judgments and let a holy fear so soften our spirits and an intense love so 〈◊〉 and sanctifie our desires that we may apprehend every intimation of thy pleasure at its first and remotest and most obscure representment that so we may with Repentance go out to meet thee and prevent the expresses of thine anger Let thy restraining grace and the observation of the issues of thy Justice so allay our spirits that we be not severe and forward in condemning others nor backward in passing sentence upon our selves Make us to obey thy voice described in holy Scripture to tremble at thy voice expressed in wonders and great effects of Providence to condemn none but our selves nor to enter into the recesses of thy Sanctuary and search the forbidden records of Predestination but that we may read our duty in the pages of Revelation not in the labels of accidental effects that thy Judgments may confirm thy Word and thy Word teach us our Duty and we by such excellent instruments may enter in and grow up in the ways of Godliness through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen SECT XV. Of the Accidents happening from the Death of Lazarus untill the Death and Burial of JESVS Bartimeus healed of blindnesse Mark 10. 46. And as he went out of Iericho with his Disciples and a great number of people blind Bartimeus sate by the high way begging 47. And when he heard that it was Iesus of Nazareth he began to cry out and say Iesus thou son of David have mercy on me Lazarus raysed from death Ioh. 11. 44. And he that was dead came forth bound hand and foot with gravecloths and his face was bound about with a napkin Iesus saith unto them Loose him and let him go 45. Then Many of the Iewes which came to Mary and had seen the things which Iesus did believed on him 1. VVHile Jesus was in Galilee messengers came to him from Martha and her Sister Mary that he would hasten into Judaea to Bethany to relieve the sickness and imminent dangers of their Brother Lazarus But he deferred his going till Lazarus was dead purposing to give a great probation of his Divinity Power and Mission by a glorious Miracle and to give God glory and to receive reflexions of the glory upon himself For after he had stayed two days he called his Disciples to go with him into Judaea telling them that Lazarus was dead but he would raise him out of that sleep of death But by that time Jesus was arrived at Bethany he found that Lazarus had been dead four days and now near to putrefaction But when Martha and Mary met him weeping their pious tears for their dead Brother Jesus suffered the passions of piety and humanity and wept distilling that precious liquor into the grave of Lazarus watering the dead plant that it might spring into a new life and raise his head above the ground 2. When Jesus had by his words of comfort and institution strengthened the Faith of the two mourning Sisters and commanded the stone to be removed from the grave he made an address of Adoration and Eucharist to his Father confessing his perpetual propensity to hear him and then cried out Lazarus come forth And he that was dead came forth from his bed of darkness with his night-cloaths on him whom when the Apostles had unloosed at the command of Jesus he went to Bethany and many that were present believed on him but others wondring and malicious went and told the Pharisees the story of the Miracle who upon that advice called their great Council whose great and solemn cognisance was of the greater causes of Prophets of Kings and of the holy Law At this great Assembly it was that Caiaphas the High Priest prophesied that it was expedient one should die for the people And thence they determined the death of Jesus But he knowing they had passed a decretory sentence against him retired to the City 〈◊〉 in the Tribe of Judah near the desart where he stayed a few days till the approximation of the Feast of Easter 3. Against which Feast when Jesus with his Disciples was going to Jerusalem he told them the event of the journey would be that the Jews should deliver him to the Gentiles that they should scourge him and mock him and crucifie him and the third day he should rise again After which discourse the Mother of 〈◊〉 's Children begg'd of Jesus for her two Sons that one of them might sit at his right hand the other at the left in his Kingdom For no discourses of his Passion or intimations of the mysteriousness of his Kingdom could yet put them into right understandings of their condition But Jesus whose heart and thoughts were full of phancy and apprehensions of the neighbour Passion gave them answer in proportion to his present conceptions and their future condition For if they desired the honours of his Kingdom such as they were they should have them unless themselves did decline them they should drink of his Cup and dip in his Lavatory and be washed with his baptism and sit in his Kingdom if the heavenly Father had prepared it for them but the donation of that immediately was an issue of Divine election and predestination and was only competent to them who by holy living and patient suffering put themselves into a disposition of becoming vessels of Election 4. But as Jesus in this journey came near Jericho he cures a blind man who sate begging by the way-side and espying Zaccheus the chief of the Publicans upon a tree that he being low of stature might upon that advantage of station see Jesus passing by he invited
the griefs of a Christian whether they be instances of Repentance or parts of Persecution or exercises of Patience end in joy and endless comfort Thus Jesus like a Rainbow half made of the glories of light and half of the moisture of a cloud half triumph and half sorrow entred into that Town where he had done much good to others and to himself received nothing but affronts yet his tenderness encreased upon him and that very journey which was Christ's last solemn visit for their recovery he doubled all the instruments of his Mercy and their Conversion He rode in triumph the 〈◊〉 sang Hosannah to him he cured many diseased persons he wept for them and pitied them and sighed out the intimations of a Prayer and did penance for their ingratitude and stayed all day there looking about him towards evening and no man would invite him home but he was forced to go to Bethany where he was sure of an hospitable entertainment I think no Christian that reads this but will be full of indignation at the whole City who for malice or for fear would not or durst not receive their Saviour into their houses and yet we do worse for now that he is become our Lord with mightier demonstrations of his eternal power we suffer him to look round about upon us for months and years together and possibly never entertain him till our house is ready to rush upon our heads and we are going to unusual and stranger habitations And yet in the midst of a populous and mutinous City this great King had some good subjects persons that threw away their own garments and laid them at the feet of our Lord that being devested of their own they might be re-invested with a robe of his Righteousness wearing that till it were changed into a stole of glory the very ceremony of their reception of the Lord became symbolical to them and expressive of all our duties 7. But I consider that the Blessed Jesus had affections not less than infinite towards all mankind and he who wept upon Jerusalem who had done so great despight to him and within five days were to fill up the measure of their iniquities and do an act which all Ages of the world could never repeat in the same instance did also in the number of his tears reckon our sins as sad considerations and incentives of his sorrow And it would well become us to consider what great evil we do when our actions are such as for which our Blessed Lord did weep He who was seated in the bosom of Felicity yet he moistened his 〈◊〉 Lawrels upon the day of his Triumph with tears of love and bitter allay His day of Triumph was a day of Sorrow and if we would weep for our sins that instance of sorrow would be a day of triumph and 〈◊〉 8. From hence the Holy Jesus went to Pethany where he had another manner of reception than at the Holy City There he supped for his goodly day of Triumph had been with him a fasting-day And Mary Magdalen who had spent one box of Nard pistick upon our Lord's feet as a sacrifice of Eucharist for her Conversion now bestowed another in thankfulness for the restitution of her Brother Lazarus to life and consigned her Lord unto his Burial And here she met with an evil interpreter 〈◊〉 an Apostle one of the Lord 's own Family pretended it had been a better Religion to have given it to the poor but it was Malice and the spirit either of Envy or Avarice in him that passed that sentence for he that sees a pious action well done and seeks to undervalue it by telling how it might have been better reproves nothing but his own spirit For a man may do very well and God would accept it though to say he might have done better is to say only that action was not the most perfect and absolute in its kind but to be angry at a religious person and without any other pretence but that he might have done better is spiritual Envy for a pious person would have nourished up that infant action by love and praise till it had grown to the most perfect and intelligent Piety But the event of that man gave the interpretation of his present purpose and at the best it could be no other than a rash judgment of the action and intention of a religious thankful and holy person But she found her Lord who was her 〈◊〉 in this become her Patron and her Advocate And hereafter when we shall find the Devil the great Accuser of God's Saints object against the Piety and Religion of holy persons a cup of cold water shall be accepted unto reward and a good intention heightned to the value of an exteriour expression and a piece of gum to the equality of a 〈◊〉 and an action done with great zeal and an intense love be acquitted from all its adherent imperfections Christ receiving them into himself and being like the Altar of incense hallowing the very smoak and raising it into a flame and entertaining it into the embraces of the firmament and the bosom of Heaven Christ himself who is the Judge of our actions is also the entertainer and object of our Charity and Duty and the Advocate of our persons 9. Judas who declaimed against the woman made tacite reflexions upon his Lord for suffering it and indeed every obloquy against any of Christ's servants is looked on as an arrow shot into the heart of Christ himself And now a Persecution being begun against the Lord within his own Family another was raised against him from without For the chief Priests took crafty counsel against Jesus and called a Consistory to contrive how they might destroy him and here was the greatest representment of the goodness of God and the ingratitude of man that could be practised or understood How often had Jesus poured forth tears for them how many sleepless nights had he awaked to do them advantage how many days had he spent in Homilies and admirable visitations of Mercy and Charity in casting out Devils in curing their sick in correcting their delinquencies in reducing them to the ways of security and peace and that we may use the greatest expression in the world that is his own in gathering them as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings to give them strength and warmth and life and ghostly nourishment And the chief Priests together with their faction use all arts and watch all opportunities to get Christ not that they might possess him but to destroy him little considering that they extinguish their own eyes and destroy that spring of life which was intended to them for a blissful immortality 10. And here it was that the Devil shewed his promptness to furnish every evil-intended person with apt instruments to act the very worst of his intentions the Devil knew their purposes and the aptness and proclivity of Judas and by bringing these together he
served their present design and his own great intendment The Devil never fails to promote every evil purpose and except where God's restaining grace does intervene and interrupt the opportunity by interposition of different and cross accidents to serve other ends of Providence no man easily is fond of wickedness but he shall receive enough to ruine him Indeed Nero and Julian both witty men and powerfull desired to have been Magicians and could not and although possibly the Devil would have corresponded with them who yet were already his own in all degrees of security yet God permitted not that lest they might have understood new ways of doing despight to Martyrs and 〈◊〉 Christians And it concerns us not to tempt God or invite a forward enemy for as we are sure the Devil is ready to promote all vicious desires and bring them out to execution so we are not sure that God will not permit him and he that desires to be undone and cares not to be prevented by God's restraining grace shall finde his ruine in the folly of his own desires and become wretched by his own election Judas hearing of this Congregation of the Priests went and offered to betray his Lord and made a Covenant the Price of which was Thirty Pieces of Silver and he returned 11. It is not intimated in the History of the Life of Jesus that Judas had any Malice against the Person of Christ for when afterwards he saw the matter was to end in the death of his Lord he repented but a base and unworthy spirit of Covetousness possessed him and the reliques of 〈◊〉 for missing the Price of the Ointment which the holy Magdalen had poured upon his feet burnt in his bowels with a secret dark melancholick 〈◊〉 and made an eruption into an act which all ages of the world could never parallel They appointed him for hire thirty pieces and some say that every piece did in value equal ten ordinary current Deniers and so Judas was satisfied by receiving the worth of the three hundred pence at which he valued the Nard pistick But hereafter let no Christian be ashamed to be despised and undervalued for he will hardly meet so great a reproach as to have so disproportioned a price set upon his life as was upon the Holy Jesus S. Mary 〈◊〉 thought it not good enough to aneal his sacred feet Judas thought it a sufficient price for his head for Covetousness aims at base and low purchaces whilest holy Love is great and comprehensive as the bosome of Heaven and aims at nothing that is less than infinite The love of God is a holy fountain limpid and pure sweet and salutary lasting and eternal the love of Mony is a vertiginous pool sucking all into it to destroy it it is troubled and uneven giddy and unsafe serving no end but its own and that also in a restless and uneasie motion The love of God spends it self upon him to receive again the reflexions of grace and benediction the love of Money spends all its desires upon it sell to purchase nothing but unsatisfying instruments of exchange or supernumerary provisions and ends in dissatisfaction and emptiness of spirit and a bitter curse S. Mary Magdalen was defended by her Lord against calumny and rewarded with an honourable mention to all Ages of the Church besides the unction from above which she shortly after received to consign her to crowns and sceptres but Judas was described in the Scripture the Book of life with the black character of death he was disgraced to eternal Ages and presently after acted his own tragedy with a sad and ignoble death 12. Now all things being fitted our Blessed Lord sends two Disciples to prepare the Passeover that he might fulfill the Law of Moses and pass from thence to institutions Evangelical and then fulfill his Sufferings Christ gave them a sign to guide them to the house a man bearing a pitcher of water by which some that delight in mystical significations say was typified the Sacrament of Baptism meaning that although by occasion of the Paschal solemnity the holy Eucharist was first instituted yet it was afterwards to be applied to practice according to the sence of this accident only baptized persons were apt suscipients of the other more perfective Rite as the taking nutriment supposes persons born into the world and within the common conditions of humane nature But in the letter it was an instance of the Divine omniscience who could pronounce concerning accidents at distance as if they were present and yet also like the provision of the Colt to ride on it was an instance of Providence and security of all God's sons for their portion of temporals Jesus had not a Lamb of his own and possibly no money in the bags to buy one and yet Providence was his guide and the charity of a good man was his Proveditore and he found excellent conveniences in the entertainments of a hospitable good man as if he had dwelt in Ahab's Ivory-house and had had the riches of Solomon and the meat of his houshold The PRAYER O Holy King of Sion Eternal Jesus who with great Humility and infinite Love didst enter into the Holy City riding upon an Asse that thou mightest verisie the Predictions of the Prophets and give example of Meekness and of the gentle and paternal government which the eternal Father laid upon thy shoulders be pleased deares̄t Lord to enter into my Soul with triumph trampling over all thine enemies and give me grace to entertain thee with joy and adoration with abjection of my own desires with lopping off all my supersluous branches of a temporal condition and spending them in the offices of Charity and Religion and devesting my self of all my desires laying them at thy holy feet that I may bear the yoke and burthen of the Lord with alacrity with love and the wonders of a satisfied and triumphant spirit Lord enter in and take possession and thou to whose honour the very stones would give testimony make my stony heart an instrument of thy praises let me strew thy way with flowers of Vertue and the holy Rosary of Christian Graces and by thy aid and example let us also triumph over all our infirmities and hostilities and then lay our victories at thy feet and at last follow thee into thy heavenly Jerusalem with palms in our hands and joy in our hearts and eternal acclamations on our lips rejoycing in thee and singing Hallelujahs in a happy Eternity to thee O holy King of Sion eternal Jesus Amen 2. O Blessed and dear Lord who wert pleased to permit thy self to be sold to the assemblies of evil persons for a vile price by one of thy own servants for whom thou hadst done so great favours and hadst designed a crown and a throne to him and he turned himself into a sooty coal and entred into the portion of evil Angels teach us to value thee above all the joys of men to prize
which we shall no more be at war with Reason nor so much with Sense and not at all with Faith And for persons of the contradictory perswasion who to avoid the natural sence affirm it only to be figurative since their design is only to make this Sacrament to be Christ's Body in the sence of Faith and not of Philosophy they may remember that its being really present does not hinder but that all that reality may be spiritual and if it be Christ's Body so it be not affirmed such in a natural sence and manner it is still only the object of Faith and spirit and if it be affirmed only to be spiritual there is then no danger to Faith in admitting the words of Christ's institution This is my Body I suppose it to be a mistake to think what soever is real must be natural and it is no less to think spiritual to be only figurative that 's too much and this is too little Philosophy and Faith may well be reconciled and whatsoever objection can invade this union may be cured by modesty And if we profess we understand not the manner of this Mystery we say no more but that it is a Mystery and if it had been necessary we should have construed it into the most latent sence Christ himself would have given a Clavis and taught the Church to unlock so great a Secret Christ said This is my Body this is my 〈◊〉 S. Paul said The bread of blessing that we break is the communication of the body of Christ and the Chalice which we bless is the communication of the bloud of Christ and We are all one body because we eat of one bread One proposition as well as the other is the matter of Faith and the latter of them is also of Sense one is as literal as the other and he that distinguishes in his belief as he may place the impropriety upon which part he please and either say it is improperly called Bread or improperly called Christ's Body so he can have nothing to secure his proposition from errour or himself from boldness in decreeing concerning Mysteries against the testimonies of Sense or beyond the modesty and simplicity of Christian Faith Let us love and adore the abyss of Divine Wisdom and Goodness and entertain the Sacrament with just and holy receptions and then we shall receive all those fruits of it which an earnest disputer or a peremptory dogmatizer whether he happen right or wrong hath no warrant to expect upon the interest of his Opinion 4. In the Institution of this Sacrament Christ manifested first his Almighty Power secondly his infinite Wisdome and thirdly his unspeakable Charity First his Power is manifest in making the Symbols to be the instruments of conveying himself to the spirit of the Receiver He nourishes the Soul with Bread and feeds the Body with a Sacrament he makes the Body spiritual by his Graces there ministred and makes the Spirit to be united to his Body by a participation of the Divine nature In the Sacrament that Body which is reigning in Heaven is exposed upon the Table of blessing and his Body which was broken for us is now broken again and yet remains impassible Every consecrated portion of bread and wine does exhibit Christ intirely to the faithful Receiver and yet Christ remains one while he is wholly ministred in 10000 portions So long as we call these mysterious and make them intricate to exercise our Faith and to represent the wonder of the Mystery and to encrease our Charity our being inquisitive into the abyss can have no evil purposes God hath instituted the Rite in visible Symbols to make the secret Grace as presential and discernible as it might that by an instrument of Sense our spirits might be accommodated as with an exteriour object to produce an internal act But it is the prodigy of a miraculous power by instruments so easie to produce effects so glorious This then is the object of Wonder and Adoration 5. Secondly And this effect of Power does also remark the Divine Wisdome who hath ordained such Symbols which not only like spittle and clay toward the curing blind eyes proclaim an Almighty Power but they are apposite and proper to signifie a Duty and become to us like the Word of Life and from Bread they turn into a Homily For therefore our wisest Master hath appointed Bread and Wine that we may be corporally united to him that as the Symbols becoming nutriment are turned into the substance of our bodies so Christ being the food of our Souls should assimilate us making us partakers of the Divine Nature It also tells us that from hence we derive life and holy motion for in him we live and move and have our being He is the staff of our life and the light of our eyes and the strength of our spirit He is the Viand for our journey and the antepast of Heaven And because this holy Mystery was intended to be a Sacrament of Union that Lesson is morally represented in the Symbols That as the salutary juice is expressed from many clusters running into one 〈◊〉 and the Bread is a mass made of many grains of Wheat so we also as the Apostie infers from hence himself observing the analogy should be one bread and one bodr because we partake of that one bread And it were to be wished that from hence also all Christians would understand a signification of another Duty and that they would 〈◊〉 communicate as remembring that the Soul may need a frequent ministration as well as the Body its daily proportion This consideration of the Divine Wisdome is apt to produce Reverence Humility and Submission of our understanding to the immensity of God's unsearchable abysses 6. Thirdly But the story of the Love of our dearest Lord is written in largest characters who not only was at that instant busie in doing Man the greatest good even then when man was contriving his death and his dishonour but contrived to represent his bitter Passion to us without any circumstances of horror in symbols of pleasure and delight that we may taste and see how gracious our LORD is who would not transmit the record of his Passion to us in any thing that might trouble us No Love can be greater than that which is so beatifical as to bestow the greatest good and no Love can be better expressed than that which although it is productive of the greatest blessings yet is curious also to observe the smallest circumstances And not only both these but many other circumstances and arguments of Love concur in the Holy Sacrament 1. It is a tenderness of affection that ministers wholsome Physick with arts and instruments of pleasure And such was the Charity of our Lord who brings health to us in a golden Chalice life not in the bitter drugs of Egypt but in spirits and quintessences giving us apples of Paradise at the same time yielding food and health
heathless body become fuel to a fever and increase the distemperature from indisposition to a sharp disease and from thence to the margent of the grave But it was otherwise in Saul whom Jesus threw to the ground with a more angry sound than these persecutors but Saul rose a Saint and they persisted Devils and the grace of God distinguished the events The PRAYER O Holy Jesus make me by thy example to conform to the will of that Eternal God who is our Father merciful and gracious that I may chuse all those accidents which his Providence hath actually disposed to me that I may know no desires but his commands and his will and that in all afflictions I may fly thither for mercy pardon and support and may wait for deliverance in such times and manners which the Father hath reserved in his own power and graciously dispenses according to his infinite wisdom and compassion Holy Jesus give me the gift and spirit of Prayer and do thou by thy gracious intercession supply my ignorances and passionate desires and imperfect choices procuring and giving to me such returns of favour which may support my needs and serve the ends of Religion and the Spirit which thy wisdom chuses and thy Passion hath purchased and thy grace loves to bestow upon all thy Saints and servants Amen II. ETernal God sweetest Jesu who didst receive Judas with the affection of a Saviour and sufferedst him to kiss thy cheek with the serenity and tranquillity of God and didst permit the souldiers to bind thee with Patience exemplary to all ages of Martyrs and didst cure the wound of thy enemy with the Charity of a Parent and the tenderness of an infinite pity O kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth embrace me with the entertainments of a gracious Lord and let my Soul dwell and feast in thee who art the repository of eternal sweetness and refreshments Bind me O Lord with those bands which tied thee fast the chains of Love that such holy union may dissolve the cords of vanity and confine the bold pretensions of usurping Passions and imprison all extravagancies of an impertinent spirit and lead Sin captive to the dominion of Grace and sanctified Reason that I also may imitate all the parts of thy holy Passion and may by thy bands get my liberty by thy kiss enkindle charity by the touch of thy hand and the breath of thy mouth have all my wounds cured and restored to the integrity of a holy Penitent and the purities of Innocence that I may love thee and please thee and live with thee for ever O Holy and sweetest Jesu Amen Considerations upon the Scourging and other Accidents happening from the Apprehension till the Crucifixion of JESUS Christ brought before the Highpreist Iohn 18 12. Then the Band and the Captain and the Officers of the Iews took Iesus and bound him 25. And lead him away to Annas first for he was Father-in-law to Cajaphas which was Highpreist that same yeare Christ arraigned before Herod Luk. 23. 7. 8. 11. And assoone as he knew that he belonged to Herods jurisdiction he sent him to Herod 8. And when Herod saw Iesus he was exceeding glad 11. And Herod with his men of war set him at nought and mocked him and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe and sent him againe to Pilate 1. THE house of Annas stood in the mount Sion and in the way to the house of Caiaphas and thither he was led as to the first stage of their triumph for their surprise of a person so feared and desired and there a naughty person smote the 〈◊〉 Jesus upon the face for saying to Annas that he had made his Doctrine publick and that all the people were able to give account of it to whom the Lamb of God 〈◊〉 as much meekness and patience in his answer as in his answer to Annas he had 〈◊〉 prudence and modesty For now that they had taken Jesus they wanted a crime to object against him and therefore were desirous to snatch occasion from his discourses to which they resolved to tempt him by questions and affronts but his answer was general and indefinite safe and true enough to acquit his Doctrine from suspicions of secret designs and yet secure against their present snares for now himself who always had the innocence of Doves was to joyn with it the prudence and wariness of Serpents not to prevent death for that he was resolved to suffer but that they might be destitute of all apparence of a just cause on his part Here it was that Judas received his money and here that holy Face which was designed to be that object in the beholding of which much of the celestial glory doth consist that Face which the Angels stare upon with wonder like infants at a bright Sun-beam was smitten extrajudicially by an incompetent person with circumstances of despight in the presence of a Judge in a full assembly and none reproved the insolency and the cruelty of the affront for they resolved to use him as they use Wolves and Tigres with all things that may be destructive violent and impious and in this the injury was heightned because the blow was said to be given by Malchus an Idumaean slave and therefore a contemptible person but far more unworthy by his ingratitude for so he repayed the Holy Jesus for working a Miracle and healing his ear But so the Scripture was fulfilled He shall give his body to the smiters and his cheeks to the nippers saith the Prophet Isay and They shall smite the cheek of the Judge of Israel saith Micah And this very circumstance of the Passion Lactantius affirms to have been foretold by the Erythraean Sibyll But no meekness or indifferency could engage our Lord not to protest his innocency and though following his steps we must walk in the regions of patience and tranquillity and admirable toleration of injuries yet we may represent such defences of our selves which by not resisting the sentence may testifie that our suffering is undeserved and if our Innocency will not preserve our lives it will advance our title to a better and every good cause ill judged shall be brought to another tribunal to receive a just and unerring sentence 2. Annas having suffered this unworthy usage towards a person so excellent sent him away to Caiphas who had formerly in a full council resolved he should die yet now palliating the design with the scheme of a tribunal they seek out for witnesses and the witnesses are to seek for allegations and when they find them they are to seek for proof and those proofs were to seek for unity and consent and nothing was ready for their purposes but they were forced to use the semblance of a judicial process that because they were to make use of Pilate's authority to put him to death they might perswade Pilate to accept of their examination and conviction without farther enquiry But such
an uncharitable circumstance do not commit the same fault which in them we so hate and accuse Let no man speak any thing of his neighbourhood but what is true and yet if a truth be heightned by the biting Rhetorick of a satyrical spirit extended and drawn forth in circumstances and arts of aggravation the truth becomes a load to the guilty person is a prejudice to the sentence of the Judge and hath not so much as the excuse of Zeal much less the Charity of Christianity Sufficient to every man is the plain story of his crime and to excuse as much of it as we can would better become us who perish unless we be excused for infinite irregularities But if we add this also that we accuse our Brethren 〈◊〉 them that may amend them and reform their error if we pity their persons and do not hate them if we seek nothing of their disgrace and make not their shame publick but when the publick is necessarily concerned or the state of the man's sin requires it then our accusations are charitable but if they be not all such accusations are accepted by Christ with as much displeasure in proportion to the degree of the malice and the proper effect as was this Acculation of his own person 9. But Pilate having pronounced Jesus innocent and perceiving he was a Galilean sent him to 〈◊〉 as being a more competent person to determine 〈◊〉 one of his own jurisdiction Herod was glad at the honour done to him and the person brought him being now desirous to see some Miracle 〈◊〉 before him But the Holy Jesus spake not one word there nor did any sign so to reprove the sottish carelesness of Herod who living in the place of Jesus's abode never had seen his person or heard his Sermons And if we neglect the opportunities of Grace and refuse to hear the 〈◊〉 of Christ in the time of mercy and Divine appointment we may arrive at that state of 〈◊〉 in which Christ will refuse to speak one word of comfort to us and the Homilies of the Gospel shall be dead letters and the spirit not at all refreshed nor the Understanding instructed nor the Affections moved nor the Will determined but because we have during all our time stopt our ears in his time God will stop his mouth and shut up the springs of Grace that we shall receive no refreshment or instruction or pardon or felicity Jesus suffered not himself to be moved at the pertinacious accusations of the 〈◊〉 nor the desires of the Tyrant but persevered in silence till Herod and his servants despised him and dismissed him For so it became our High Priest who was to sanctifie all our sufferings to consecrate affronts and scorn that we may learn to endure contempt and to suffer our selves in a religious cause to be despised and when it happens in any other to remember that we have our dearest Lord for a precedent of bearing it with admirable simplicity and equanimity of deportment and it is a mighty stock of self-Self-love that dwells in our spirits which makes us of all afflictions most impatient of this But Jesus endured this despite and suffered this to be added that he was exposed in scorn to the boys of 〈◊〉 streets For 〈◊〉 caused him to be arrayed in white sent him out to be scorned by the people and hooted at by idle persons and so remitted him to Pilate And since that Accident to our Lord the Church hath not undecently chose to cloath her Priests with Albs or white garments and it is a symbolical intimation and representment of that part of the Passion and 〈◊〉 which Herod passed upon the Holy Jesus and this is so far from deserving a reproof that it were to be wished all the children of the Church would imitate all those Graces which Christ exercised when he wore that garment which she hath taken up in ceremony and thankful memory that is in all their actions and sufferings be so estranged from secular arts and mixtures of the world so intent upon Religion and active in all its interests so indifferent to all acts of Providence so equal in all chances so patient of every accident so charitable to enemies and so undetermined by exteriour events that nothing may draw us forth from 〈◊〉 severities of our Religion or entice us from the retirements of a 〈◊〉 and sober and patient spirit or make us to depart from the courtesies of Piety though for such adhesion and pursuit we be esteemed fools or ignorant or contemptible Iesus is scourged by the Souldiers Mar 15 14. Then Pilate said unto them why what evill hath he done and they cried the more exceedingly Crucify him 15 And so Pilate willing to content the People released Barabbas unto them and delivered Iesus when he had scourged him to be Crucified They Crown him with Thornes Mat 27. 28. And they stripped him and put on him a Scarlet robe 29 And when they had platted a crown of Thornes they put it upon his head and a reed in his right hand and they bowed the knee before him mocked him saying Hayle King of the Iews 10. When Pilate had received the Holy Jesus and found that Herod had sent him back uncondemned he attempted to rescue him from their malice by making him a donative and a freed man at the petition of the people But they preferred a Murtherer and a Rebel Barabbas before him for themselves being Rebels against the King of Heaven loved to acquit persons criminal in the same kind of sin rather than their Lord against whom they took up all the arms which they could receive from violence and perfect malice desiring to have him crucified who raised the dead and to have the other 〈◊〉 who destroyed the living And when Pilate saw they were set upon it he consented and delivered him first to be scourged which the souldiers executed with violence and unrelenting hands opening his virginal body to nakedness and tearing his tender flesh till the pavement was purpled with a shower of holy bloud Itis reported in the Ecclesiastical story that when S. Agnes and S. Barbara holy Virgins and Martyrs were stripp'd naked to execution God pitying their great shame and trouble to have their nakedness discovered made for them a veil of light and sent them to a modest and desired death But the Holy Jesus who chose all sorts of shame and confusion that by a fulness of suffering he might expiate his Father's anger and that he might consecrate to our sufferance all kind of affront and passion endured even the shame of nakedness at the time of his scourging suffering himself to be devested of his robes that we might be clothed with that stole he put off for 〈◊〉 he 〈◊〉 on him the state of sinning Adam and became naked that we might 〈◊〉 be 〈◊〉 with Righteousness and then with Immortality 11. After they had scourged him without remorse they clothed him
death even the death of the Cross Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every name Thus his present life was a state of merit and work and as a reward of it he was crowned with glory and immortality his Name was exalted his Kingdom glorified he was made the Lord of all the Creatures the first-fruits of the Resurrection the exemplar of glory and the Prince and Head of the Catholick Church and because this was his recompence and the fruits of his Humility and Obedience it is certain it was not a necessary consequence and a natural efflux of the personal union of the Godhead with the Humanity This I discourse to this purpose that we may not in our esteem lessen the suffering of our dearest Lord by thinking he had the supports of actual Glory in the midst of all his Sufferings For there is no one minute or ray of Glory but its fruition does outweigh and make us insensible of the greatest calamities and the spirit of pain which can be extracted from all the infelicities of this world True it is that the greatest beauties in this world are receptive of an allay of sorrow and nothing can have pleasure in all capacities The most beautious feathers of the birds of Paradise the Estrich or the Peacock if put into our throat are not there so pleasant as to the eye But the beatifick joys of the least glory of Heaven take away all pain wipe away all tears from our eyes and it is not possible that at the same instant the Soul of Jesus should be ravished with Glory and yet abated with pains grievous and 〈◊〉 On the other side some say that the Soul of Jesus upon the Cross suffered the pains of Hell and all the torments of the damned and that without such sufferings it is not imaginable he should pay the price which God's wrath should demand of us But the same that reproves the one does also reprehend the other for the Hope that was the support of the Soul of Jesus as it confesses an imperfection that is not consistent with the state of Glory so it excludes the Despair that is the torment proper to accursed souls Our dearest Lord suffered the whole condition of Humanity Sin only excepted and freed us from Hell with suffering those sad pains and merited Heaven for his own Humanity as the Head and all faithful people as the Members of his mystical Body And therefore his life here was only a state of pilgrimage not at all trimmed with beatifick glories Much less was he ever in the state of Hell or upon the Cross felt the formal misery and spirit of torment which is the 〈◊〉 of damned spirits because it was impossible Christ should despair and without Despair it is impossible there should be a Hell But this is highly probable that in the intension of degrees and present anguish the Soul of our Lord might feel a greater load of wrath than is incumbent in every instant upon perishing souls For all the sadness which may be imagined to be in Hell consists in acts produced from principles that cannot surpass the force of humane or Angelical nature but the pain which our Blessed Lord endured for the expiation of our sins was an issue of an united and concentred anger was received into the heart of God and Man and was commensurate to the whole latitude of the Grace Patience and Charity of the Word incarnate The Crucisixion Mark 15 25. Erat autem Hora tertia crucifixerunt eum Mark 15 25. And is was the third houre they crucified him The takeing down from the Cross. Luk. 23 50 And there was a man named Ioseph a Counsellour he was a good man a lust y e same had not consented to y e counsell deed of them 52. This man went unto Pilate begged y e Body of Iesus 53 And he took it down wrapped it in linen layd it in a Sepulehre that was hewn in stone wherein never man before was layd 6. And now behold the Priest and the Sacrifice of all the world laid upon the Altar of the Cross bleeding and tortured and dying to reconcile his Father to us and he was arrayed with ornaments more glorious than the robes of Aaron The Crown of Thorns was his Mitre the Cross his Pastoral staffe the Nails piercing his hands were in stead of Rings the ancient ornament of Priests and his flesh rased and checker'd with blew and bloud in stead of the parti-coloured Robe But as this object calls for our Devotion our Love and Eucharist to our dearest Lord so it must needs irreconcile us to Sin which in the eye of all the world brought so great shame and pain and amazement upon the Son of God when he only became engaged by a charitable substitution of himself in our place and therefore we are assured by the demonstration of sense and experience it will bring death and all imaginable miseries as the just expresses of God's indignation and hatred for to this we may apply the words of our Lord in the prediction of miseries to Jerusalem If this be done in the green tree what shall be done in the dry For it is certain Christ infinitely pleased his Father even by becoming the person made 〈◊〉 in estimate of Law and yet so great Charity of our Lord and the so great love and pleasure of his Father exempted him not from suffering pains intolerable and much less shall those escape who provoke and displease God and despise so great Salvation which the Holy Jesus hath wrought with the expence of bloud and so precious a life 7. But here we see a great representation and testimony of the Divine Justice who was so angry with sin who had so severely threatned it who does so essentially hate it that he would not spare his only Son when he became a conjunct person relative to the guilt by undertaking the charges of our Nature For although God hath set down in holy Scripture the order of his Justice and the manner of its manifestation that one Soul shall not perish for the sins of another yet this is meant for Justice and for Mercy too that is he will not curse the Son for the Father's fault or in any relation whatsoever substitute one person for another to make him involuntarily guilty But when this shall be desired by a person that cannot finally perish and does a mercy to the exempt persons and is a voluntary act of the suscipient and shall in the event also redound to an infinite good it is no deflection from the Divine Justice to excuse many by the affliction of one who also for that very suffering shall have infinite compensation We see that for the sin of Cham all his posterity were accursed the Subjects of David died with the Plague because their Prince numbred the people Idolatry is punished in the children of the fourth generation
of the Paschal Supper he arose from the Table and laying aside his upper garment which according to the fashion of those Eastern Countries being long was unfit for action and himself taking a Towel and pouring water into a Bason he began to wash all the Apostles feet not disdaining those of Judas himself Coming to Peter he would by no means admit an instance of so much condescension What the Master do this to the Servant the Son of God to so vile a sinner This made him a second time refuse it Thou shalt never wash my feet But our Lord soon corrects his imprudent modesty by telling him That if he wash'd him not he could have no part with him Insinuating the mystery of this action which was to denote Remission of sin and the purifying vertue of the Spirit of Christ to be poured upon all true Christians Peter satisfied with this answer soon altered his resolution Lord not my feet only but also my hands and my head If the case be so let me be wash'd all over rather than come short of my portion in thee This being done he returned again to the Table and acquainted them with the meaning and tendency of this mystical action and what force it ought to have upon them towards one another The washing it self denoted their inward and Spiritual cleansing by the Bloud and Spirit of Christ symbolically typified and 〈◊〉 by all the washings and Baptisms of the Mosaick Institution The washing of the feet respected our intire sanctification in our whole Spirit Soul and Body no part being to be left impure And then that all this should be done by so great a person their Lord and Master preached to their very senses a Sermon of the greatest humility and condescension and taught them how little reason they had to boggle at the meanest offices of kindness and charity towards others when he himself had stoop'd to solow an abasure towards them And now he began more immediately to reflect upon his sufferings and upon him who was to be the occasion of them telling them that one of them would be the Traitor to betray him Whereat they were strangely troubled and every one began to suspect himself till Peter whose love and care for his Master commonly made him start sooner than the rest made signs to S. John who lay in our Saviour's bosom to ask him particularly who it was which our Saviour presently did by making them understand that it was Judas Iscariot who not long after left the company 2. AND now our Lord began the Institution of his Supper that great solemn Institution which he was resolved to leave behind him to be constantly celebrated in all Ages of the Church as the standing monument of his love in dying for mankind For now he told them that he himself must leave them and that whither he went they could not come Peter not well understanding what he meant asked him whither it was that he was going Our Lord replied It was to that place whither he could not now follow him but that he should do it afterwards intimating the Martyrdom he was to undergo for the sake of Christ. To which Peter answered that he knew no reason why he might not follow him seeing that if it was even to the laying down of his life for his sake he was most ready and resolved to do it Our Lord liked not this over-confident presumption and therefore told him they were great things which he promised but that he took not the true measures of his own strength nor espied the snares and designs of Satan who desired no better an occasion than this to sift and winnow them But that he had prayed to Heaven for him That his faith might not fail by which means being strengthened himself he should be obliged to strengthen and confirm his brethren And whereas he so confidently assured him that he was ready to go along with him not only into prison but even to death it self our Lord plainly told him That not withstanding all his confident and generous resolutions before the Cock crowed twice that is before three of the Clock in the morning he would that very night three several times deny his Master With which answer our Lord wisely rebuked his confidence and taught him had he understood the lesson not to trust to his own strength but intirely to depend upon him who is able to keep us from salling Withall insinuating that though by his sin he would justly forseit the Divine grace and favour yet upon his repentance he should be restored to the honour of the Apostolate as a certain evidence of the Divine goodness and indulgence to him 3. HAVING sung an Hymn and concluded the whole affair he left the house where all these things had been transacted and went with his Apostles unto the Mount of Olives where he again put them in mind how much they would be offended at those things which he was now to suffer and Peter again renewed his resolute and undaunted promise of suffering and dying with him yea out of an excessive confidence told him That though all the rest should for sake and deny him yet would not 〈◊〉 deny him How far will zeal and an 〈◊〉 affection transport even a good man into vanity and presumption Peter questions others but never doubts himself So natural is self-love so apt are we to take the fairest measures of our selves Nay though our Lord had but a little before once and again reproved this vain humour yet does he still not only persist but grow up in it So hardly are we brought to espy our own faults or to be so throughly convinced of them as to correct and reform them This confidence of his inspired all the rest with a mighty courage all the Apostles likewise assuring him of their constant and unshaken adhering to him Our Lord returning the same answer to Peter which he had done before From hence they went down into the Village of Gethsemane where leaving the rest of the Apostles he accompanied with none but Peter James and John retired into a neighbouring Garden whither 〈◊〉 tells us Christians even in his time were wont to come solemnly to offer up their Prayers to Heaven and where as the Arabian Geographer informs us a fair and stately Church was built to the honour of the Virgin Mary to enter upon the Ante-scene of the fatal Tragedy that was now approaching it bearing a very fit proportion as some of the Fathers have observed that as the first Adam fell and ruin'd mankind in a Garden so a Garden should be the place where the second Adam should begin his Passion in order to the Redemption of the World Gardens which to us are places of repose and pleasure and scenes of divertisement and delight were to our Lord a school of Temptation a Theatre of great horrors and sufferings and the first approaches of the hour of
Servant-maid that let him in and earnestly looking upon him she charged him with being one of Christ's Disciples which Peter publickly denied before all the Company positively affirming that he knew him not And presently withdrew himself into the Porch where he heard the Cock crow An intimation which one would have thought should have awakened his Conscience into a quick sense of his duty and the promise he had made unto his Master In the Porch another of the Maids set upon him charging him that he also was one of them that had been with Jesus of Nazareth which Peter stoutly denyed saying that he knew not Christ and the better to gain their belief to what he said ratified it with an Oath So natural is it for one sin to draw on another 7. ABOUT an Hour after he was a third time set upon by a Servant of the High Priest Malchus his Kinsman whose Ear Peter had lately cut off By him he was charged to be one of Christ's Disciples Yea that his very speech betrayed him to be a Galilean For the Galileans though they did not speak a different language had yet a different Dialect using a more confused and barbarous a broader and more unpolished way of pronunciation than the rest of the Jews whereby they were easily distinguishable in their speaking from other men abundant instances whereof there are extant in the Talmud at this day Nay not only gave this evidence but added that he himself had seen him with Jesus in the Garden Peter still resolutely denied the matter and to add the highest accomplishment to his sin ratified it not only with an Oath but a solemn Curse and execration that he was not the person that he knew not the man 'T is but a very weak excuse which S. Ambrose and some others make for this Act of Peter's in saying I knew not the Man He did well says he to deny him to be Man whom he knew to be God S. Hierom takes notice of this pious and well-meant excuse made for Peter though out of modesty he conceals the name of its Authors but yet justly censures it as trifling and frivolous and which to excuse Man from folly would charge God with falshood for if he did not deny him then our Lord was out when he said that that Night he should thrice deny him that is his Person and not only his humanity Certainly the best Apology that can be made for Peter is that he quickly repented of this great sin for no sooner had he done it but the Cock crew again at which intimation our Saviour turn'd about and earnestly looked upon him a glance that quickly pierced him to the Heart and brought to his remembrance what our Lord had once and again foretold him of how foully and shamefully he should deny him whereupon not being able to contain his sorrow he ran out of Doors to give it vent and wept bitterly passionately bewailing his folly and the aggravations of his sin thereby indeavouring to make some reparation for his fault and recover himself into the favour of Heaven and to prevent the execution of Divine Justice by taking a severe revenge upon himself by these penitential tears he endeavoured to wash off his guilt as indeed Repentance is the next step to Innocence SECT VI. Of S. Peter from Christ ' s Resurrection till his Ascension Our Lord's care to acquaint Peter with his Resurrection His going to the Sepulchre Christ's appearance to Peter when and the Reasons of it The Apostles Journey into Galilee Christ's appearing to them at the Sea of Tiberias His being discovered by the great draught of Fishes Christ's questioning Peter's love and why Feed my Sheep commended to Peter imports no peculiar supereminent power and soveraignty Peter's death and sufferings foretold Our Lord takes his last leave of the Apostles at Bethany His Ascension into Heaven The Chappel of the Ascension The Apostles joy at their Lord's Exaltation 1. WHAT became of Peter after his late Prevarication whether he followed our Saviour through the several stages of his Trial and personally attended as a Mourner at the Funerals of his Master we have no account left upon Record No doubt he stayed at Jerusalem and probably with S. John together with whom we first find him mentioned when both setting forwards to the Sepulchre which was in this manner Early on that Morning whereon our Lord was to return from the Grave Mary Magdalen and some other devout and pious Women brought Spices and Ointments with a design to Imbalm the Body of our crucified Lord. Coming to the Sepulchre at Sun-rising and finding the Door open they entred in where they were suddainly 〈◊〉 by an Angel who told them that Jesus was risen and bad them go and 〈◊〉 his Apostles and particularly Peter that he was returned from the dead and that he would go before them into Galilee where they should meet with him Hereupon they returned back and acquainted the Apostles with what had passed who beheld the story as the product of a weak frighted fancy But Peter and John presently hastned towards the Garden John being the younger and nimbler out-ran his Companion and came first thither where he only looked but entred not in either out of fear in himself or a great Reverence to our Saviour Peter though behind in space was before in zeal and being elder and more considerate came and resolutely entred in where they found nothing but the Linnen Clothes lying together in one place and the Napkin that was about his Head wrapped together in another which being disposed with so much care and order shewed what was falsly suggested by the Jewes that our Saviour's Body was not taken away by Thieves who are wont more to consult their escape than how to leave things orderly disposed behind them 2. THE same Day about Noon we may suppose it was that our Lord himself appeared alone to Peter being assured of the thing though not so precisely of the time That he did so S. Paul expresly tells us and so did the Apostles the two Disciples that came from Emmaus The Lord is risen and had appeared unto Simon which probably intimates that it was before his appearing to those two Disciples And indeed we cannot but think that our Lord would hasten the manifestation of himself to him as compassionating his case being overwhelmed with sorrow for the late shameful denial of his Master and was therefore willing in the first place to honour him with his presence at once to confirm him in the Article of his Resurrection and to let him see that he was restored to the place which before he had in his grace and favour S. Paul mentioning his several appearances after his Resurrection seems to make this the first of them That he was seen of Cephas Not that it was simply the first for he first appeared to the Women But as 〈◊〉 observes it was the first that
was made to men He was first seen by him who most desired to see him He also adds several probable conjectures why our Lord first discovered himself to Peter As that it required a more than ordinary firmness and resolution of mind to be able to bear such a sight For they who beheld him after others had seen him and had heard their frequent Testimonies and Reports had had their Faith greatly prepared and encouraged to entertain it But he who was to be honoured with the first appearance had need of a bigger and more undaunted faith lest he should be over-born 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with such a strange and unwonted sight That Peter was the first that had made a signal confession of his Master and therefore it was fit and reasonable that he should first see him alive after his Resurrection That Peter had lately denied his Lord the grief whereof lay hard upon him that therefore our Saviour was willing to administer some consolation to him and as soon as might be to let him see that he had not cast him off like the kind Samaritan he made haste to help him and to pour Oile into his wounded Conscience 3. SOME time after this the Apostles began to resolve upon their journy into Galilee as he himself had commanded them If it be inquired why they went no sooner seeing this was the first message and intimation they had received from him S. Ambrose his resolution seems very rational that our Lord indeed had commanded them to go thither but that their fears for some time kept them at home not being as yet fully satisfied in the truth of his Resurrection till our Lord by often appearing to them had confirmed their minds and put the case beyond all dispute They went as we may suppose in several Companies lest going all in one Body they should awaken the power and malice of their enemies and alarm the care and vigilancy of the state which by reason of the Noise that our Saviour's Trial and Execution had made up and down the City and Country was yet full of jealousies and fears We find Peter Thomas Nathanael and the two Sons of 〈◊〉 and two more of the Disciples arrived at some Town about the Sea of Tiberias Where the Providence of God guiding the Instance of their imployment Peter accompanied with the rest returns to his old Trade of Fishing They laboured all Night but caught nothing Early in the Morning a grave Person probably in the habit of a Traveller presents himself upon the shore And calling to them asked them whether they had any meat When they told him No He advised them to cast the Net on the right side of the Ship that so the Miracle might not seem to be the effect of chance and they should not fail to speed They did so and the Net presently inclosed so great a draught that they were scarce able to drag it a shore S. John amazed with the strangeness of the matter told 〈◊〉 that surely this must be the Lord whom the Winds and the Sea and all the Inhabitants of that watry Region were so ready to obey Peter's zeal presently took fire not withstanding the coldness of the Season and impatient of the least moments being kept from the company of his dear Lord and Master without any consideration of the danger to which he exposed himself he girt his Fishers Coat about him and throwing himself into the Sea swam to shore not being able to stay till the Ship could arrive which came presently after Landing they found a Fire ready made and Fish laid upon it either immediately created by his Divine power or which came to the shore of its own accord and offered it self to his hand Which notwithstanding he commands them to bring of the Fish which they had lately caught and prepare it for their Dinner He himself dining with them both that he might give them an instance of mutual love and fellowship and also assure them of the truth of his humane nature since his return from the dead 4. DINNER being ended our Lord more particularly addressed himself to Peter urging him to the utmost diligence in his care of Souls and because he knew that nothing but a mighty love to himself could carry him through the troubles and hazards of so dangerous and difficult an imployment an imployment attended with all the impediments which either the perversness of men or the malice and subtilty of the Devil could cast in the way to hinder it therefore he first enquired of him whether he loved him more than the rest of the Apostles herein mildly reproving his former over-confident resolution that though all the rest should deny him yet would not he deny him Peter modestly replyed not censuring others much less preferring himself before them that our Lord knew the integrity of his affection towards him This Question he put three several times to Peter who as often returned the same Answer It being but just and reasonable that he who by a threefold denial had given so much cause to question should now by a threefold consession give more than ordinary assurance of his sincere affection to his Master Peter was a little troubled at this frequent questioning of his love and therefore more expresly appeals to our Lord's omnisciency that He who knew all things must needs know that he loved him To each of these confessions our Lord added this signal trial of his affection then Feed my sheep that is faithfully instruct and teach them carefully rule and guide them perswade not compel them feed not fleece nor kill them And so 't is plain S. Peter himself understood it by the charge which he gives to the Guides and Rulers of the Church that they should feed the Flock of God taking the over-sight thereof not by constraint but willingly not for filthy 〈◊〉 but of a ready mind Neither as being Lords over God's heritage but as examples to the slock But that by feeding Christ's Sheep and Lambs here commended to S. Peter should be meant an universal and uncontrollable Monarchy and Dominion over the whole Christian Church and that over the Apostles themselves and their Successors in ordinary and this power and supremacy solely invested in S. Peter and those who were to succeed him in the See of Rome is so wild an inference and such a melting down words to run into any shape as could never with any face have been offered or been possible to have been imposed upon the belief of mankind if men had not first subdued their reason to their interest and captivated both to an implicite faith and a blind obedience For granting that our Lord here addressed his speech only unto Peter yet the very same power in equivalent terms is elsewhere indifferently granted to all the Apostles and in some measure to the ordinary Pastors and Governours of the Church As when our Lord told them That all power
and pleasure 2. Love desires to do all good to its beloved object and that is the greatest love which gives us the greatest blessings And the Sacrament therefore is the argument of his greatest love for in it we receive the honey and the honey-comb the Paschal Lamb with his bitter herbs Christ with all his griefs and his Passion with all the salutary effects of it 3. Love desires to be remembred and to have his object in perpetual representment And this Sacrament Christ designed to that purpose that he who is not present to our eyes might always be present to our spirits 4. Love demands love again and to desire to be beloved is of it self a great argument of love And as God cannot give us a greater blessing than his Love which is himself with an excellency of relation to us superadded so what greater demonstration of it can he make to us than to desire us to love him with as much earnestness and vehemency of desire as if we were that to him which he is essentially to us the author of our being and our blessing 5. And yet to consummate this Love and represent it to be the greatest and most excellent the Holy Jesus hath in this Sacrament designed that we should be united in our spirits with him incorporated to his body partake of his Divine nature and communicate in all his Graces and Love hath no expression beyond this that it desires to be united unto its object So that what Moses said to the men of Israel What nation is so great who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God is in all things for which we call upon him we can enlarge in the meditation of this Holy Sacrament for now the Lord our God calls upon us not only to be nigh unto him but to be all one with him not only as he was in the Incarnation flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone but also to communicate in spirit in grace in nature in Divinity it self 7. Upon the strength of the premisses we may sooner take an estimate of the Graces which are conveyed to us in the reception and celebration of this Holy Sacrament and Sacrifice For as it is a Commemoration and representment of Christ's Death so it is a commemorative Sacrifice as we receive the symbols and the mystery so it is a Sacrament In both capacities the benefit is next to infinite First For whatsoever Christ did at the Institution the same he commanded the Church to do in remembrance and repeated rites and himself also does the same thing in Heaven for us making perpetual Intercession for his Church the body of his redeemed ones by representing to his Father his death and sacrifice there he sits a high Priest continually and offers still the same one perfect sacrifice that is still represents it as having been once finished and consummate in order to perpetual and never-failing events And this also his Ministers do on earth they offer up the same Sacrifice to God the sacrifice of the Cross by prayers and a commemorating rite and representment according to his holy Institution And as all the effects of Grace and the titles of glory were purchased for us on the Cross and the actual mysteries of Redemption perfected on earth but are applied to us and made effectual to single persons and communities of men by Christ's Intercession in Heaven so also they are promoted by acts of Duty and Religion here on earth that we may be workers together with God as S. Paul expresses it and in virtue of the eternal and all-sufficient Sacrifice may offer up our prayers and our duty and by representing that sacrifice may send up together with our prayers an instrument of their graciousness and acceptation The Funerals of a deceased friend are not only performed at his first interring but in the monthly minds and anniversary commemorations and our grief returns upon the fight of a picture or upon any instance which our dead friend desired us to preserve as his memorial we celebrate and exhibite the Lora's death in sacrament and symbol and this is that great express which when the Church offers to God the Father it obtains all those blessings which that sacrifice purchased Themistocles snatch'd up the son of King Admetus and held him between himself and death to mitigate the rage of the King and prevailed accordingly Our very holding up the Son of God and representing him to his Father is the doing an act of mediation 〈◊〉 advantage to our selves in the virtue and efficacy of the Mediatour As Christ is a Priest in Heaven for ever and yet does not sacrifice himself afresh nor yet without a sacrifice could he be a Priest but by a daily ministration and intercession represents his sacrifice to God and offers himself as sacrificed so he does upon earth by the ministery of his servants he is offered to God that is he is by Prayers and the Sacrament represented or offered up to God as sacrificed which in effect is a celebration of his death and the applying it to the present and future necessities of the Church as we are capable by a ministery like to his in Heaven It follows then that the celebration of this Sacrifice be in its proportion an instrument of applying the proper Sacrifice to all the purposes which it first designed It is ministerially and by application an instrument propitiatory it is Eucharistical it is an homage and an act of adoration and it is impetratory and obtains for us and for the whole Church all the benefits of the sacrifice which is now celebrated and applied that is As this Rite is the remembrance and ministerial celebration of Christ's sacrifice so it is destined to do honour to God to express the homage and duty of his servants to acknowledge his supreme dominion to give him thanks and worship to beg pardon blessings and supply of all our needs And its profit is enlarged not only to the persons celebrating but to all to whom they design it according to the nature of Sacrifices and Prayers and all such solemn actions of Religion 8. Secondly If we consider this not as the act and ministery of Ecclesiastical persons but as the duty of the whole Church communicating that is as it is a 〈◊〉 so it is like the Springs of Eden from whence issue many Rivers or the Trees of celestial Jerusalem bearing various kinds of Fruit. For whatsoever was offered in the Sacrifice is given in the Sacrament and whatsoever the Testament bequeaths the holy Mysteries dispense 1. He that 〈◊〉 my 〈◊〉 and drinketh my bloud abideth in me and 〈◊〉 in him Christ in his Temple and his resting-place and the worthy Communicant is in Sanctuary and a place of protection and every holy Soul having feasted at his Table may say as S. Paul 〈◊〉 live yet not I but Christ liveth in me So that to live is Christ Christ is